Well Happy New Year dear online shoppers! I come to you with possibly some sad news. I’ve been online shopping even before Lazada became a thing in the Philippines and I’ve had a good history with PayPal as a payment system through most of my purchases. I’ve used it even before I got my own Credit Card to fully take advantage of it’s capabilities; and yes, 20 pages of Lazada orders later I was still using it.

Was being the operative word.

Sadly Lazada no longer accepts PayPal payments. I realized this on New Year’s Eve when I was shopping for a new cabinet to replace the one filled with some of my most used gadgets (tripods, cameras, etc.) with a more sturdy one. And yes, most of those little gizmos were from Lazada, and even the cabinet was from the online shop – even the RGB lighting.

And no, this isn’t a sponsored endorsement for the online store, nor is it for PayPal. This is entirely my own personal use stuff and I don’t even have an affiliate link for you to click. (I haven’t had time to re-up on the affiliate stuff yet.)

Anyway long story short, I didn’t find the familiar PayPal payment option on Lazada checkout. I found that to be weird, but I ignored it that time and just used my credit card straight out.

But today, I wanted to get another little gizmo (a count clicker) but couldn’t find a PayPal payment option, so I decided to dig a little further and found this:

According to this help page on Lazada (with no date of post attached), PayPal is now a disabled payment option for Lazada. Citing the reason of to “streamline our payment channels and to focus on delivering quality payment methods to users,” the site has now removed the payment option I liked to use the most. They even “encourage customers to save cards directly on Lazada to pay or use wallet to earn rebates.”

Now, I’m not going to say this is a complete loss – especially since a majority of the Philippine population still don’t use Credit Cards or PayPal and direct CC option still exists, but I still lament the fact that I now have to input my credit card information every time I order anything. Not to mention the fact that you can easily track purchases and expenses when using PayPal as opposed to checking your Credit Card statements – which in my experience takes forever.

While I may be stressing over something that seems natural for a company to take their payments system out of third parties, I’m still annoyed that yet another company has my credit card information in their servers. And the primary reason why I shop on Lazada was because it’s supposedly convenient.

Shopee.ph, which is Lazada’s primary competitor, has weak payment options and even weaker logistics when it comes to tracking your package. They have a hands-off approach to their sellers that, while it does offer cheaper prices, puts me in the dark as to when I’d receive my order. So yes, Lazada still does offer more convenience despite the loss of PayPal.

I just don’t like losing payment options, is what I’m saying.

Maybe I should just stop spending online. Happy New Year!