After credit card companies such as Mastercard and Visa stopped allowing payments from cards issued in Russia, PayPal is now following suit. Money can thus also no longer be transferred internationally using a PayPal account registered in Russia.
The deputy prime minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, recently published a letter from PayPal’s managing director.
With this, PayPal is ending its services in Russia that were still available until now, after domestic transactions were already no longer possible since 2020. Moreover, it is now no longer possible to create new PayPal accounts from Russia.
How does this affect conferences?
People from Russia can theoretically still register for a conference. However, there will then be difficulties when purchasing tickets unless event organizers impose restrictions on payment methods for registrations from Russia during online registration. In this context, please also note that, currently, three banks from Belarus have also been excluded from the SWIFT system.
The extent to which such individual configurations are possible for participant registration is primarily determined by the conference software used. Depending on the provider, organizers may be able to make the necessary settings themselves.
Setting country-specific restrictions in Converia
The “Payment methods” configuration menu item in the Converia backend allows you to restrict a payment method for one or more countries.
When clicking on the menu item, Converia will show you a list of all payment methods that participants can choose from when registering for your conference.
1. Switch to the settings for the payment method – in our example PayPal. There you will find the tab “Restrict payment type”.
2. Here you can create a new entry by clicking the corresponding button.
3. Make sure that “Country” is selected as the type of restriction. Under “Show payment method for”, select all countries for which PayPal should be available as a payment method. So, for Russia and Belarus the check box should be empty.
Once you have saved the settings, PayPal will only be available for selection during registration to people for whose country the restriction does not apply.
You can also use this setting to flexibly respond to any future restrictions or set more yourself.
What should happen with registrations from Ukraine?
It is common for many conferences to start registration months before the event starts.
If people from Ukraine have already registered for your conference, unfortunately their participation has become unlikely in the meantime. Please do not wait for people to contact you on their own to clarify registration details or to cancel their participation.
Do not insist on the specified cancellation conditions, but refund the participation fees without deduction – even if this may lead to a somewhat increased processing effort, which should not be an argument in this case. In addition, some conferences offer free participation for people from Ukraine, such as the economics conference “Evolving Challenges in European Economics”, which will be held in Tallinn in June.
If you are already a Converia customer, your contact person from the Converia team can help you with specific questions regarding this topic. If you have not used our software for a conference before, feel free to contact us with any questions.