PayPal is making more features freely available to Ukrainians

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

During Russia's ongoing invasion of the country, PayPal is waiving fees for Ukrainian users to use its services. According to a news release, Ukrainians will be able to send and receive peer-to-peer payments, and the company won't apply its normal fees to either side of the transaction.

Ukrainians will be able to transfer money out of their accounts onto Mastercard and Visa cards with the help of PayPal. If you set up a Ukrainian PayPal account, you will be able to access these features. Ukrainians will be able to send and receive funds in both US and Canadian dollars, as well as British pounds and Euros. The official currency of Ukraine is the hryvnia.

Before the change went into effect, Ukrainian customers were only able to send cross-border transfers, not receive them. Tom Hunter, the company's spokesman, only said that functionality varies by market.

The changes, including the removal of fees, will only be in effect for a limited time, until June 30th, 2022. Since the situation is developing, PayPal will post notices on its site if and when it makes changes.

Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov has been reaching out to tech companies to help cut off services to Russia. He wrote a letter to PayPal asking them to expand their services in the country before the company made the change.

Fedorov asked for help from companies like SpaceX, and later posted a picture of a truck full of devices, after he asked Musk to supply Starlink satellite internet dishes.

After it stopped accepting new users from the country, PayPal paused most of its services in Russia. The company said at the time it would continue work to process customer withdraws for a period of time.