PayPal arbitrage is an arbitrage business that involves use of PayPal for transactional purposes. With PayPal being a global payment (processing) service, it is undeniable that anyone can leverage PayPal arbitrage to favorably ply their arbitrage business anywhere in the world.

Although PayPal use in Nigeria comes with some restrictions, including the inability to receive payments into a Nigerian PayPal account, Nigerians in arbitrage business can tap into the awesome benefits of PayPal arbitrage.

Generally, arbitrage or online arbitrage (esp. for the sake of our context herein) is a business that involves purchasing a currency or securities (as the case may be) with the intent of reselling immediately at different market rates. By extension, the business of arbitrage may involve buying a particular foreign currency (e.g. U.S. dollar) at a low rate from one market and then instantly reselling the currency at a high rate in a different market.

Interestingly, PayPal arbitrage is a lucrative arbitrage venture from which you can make tens and hundreds of thousands in Nigeria. Therefore, this post will walk you through all you need to start PayPal arbitrage as well as the essential steps for starting the business in Nigeria.

What Do You Need to Begin a PayPal Arbitrage Business in Nigeria?

PayPal arbitrage is a form of online business with startup requirements you’ll find pretty easy to fulfill. These requirements are also the basic prerequisites for running the arbitrage business. Besides the need to be firm about your preferred currency for the business, below are the other things you need for running PayPal arbitrage:

• A standard laptop or smartphone with a reliable Internet connection
• Two active PayPal accounts –in this case, you should equip yourself with one foreign (business) PayPal account and one Nigerian PayPal account. It is necessary to have a foreign business PayPal account (such as the U.S. or UK PayPal account) since the Nigerian PayPal account cannot receive payments
• A means for generating funds for your PayPal account. This means could be a platform, medium or market from which you can purchase the currency (U.S. dollar) at a reduced price. In another way, it could be an online activity that will fetch you the preferred currency
• Another platform –probably a website –where you can find individuals willing to buy at a higher price (You may consider the P2P exchange platform Binance in this regard)
• A Transfer-wise (now known as Wise) account. This account is for performing currency exchange on Binance

Steps to Start a PayPal Arbitrage Business in Nigeria

Once you have all the startup requirements at your disposal, you only need to comply with the following startup steps in order to get your PayPal arbitrage business underway in Nigeria:

• Fund your foreign (business) PayPal account with the dollar (As mentioned earlier, you can purchase the U.S. dollar at a reduced rate from an exchange site or generate the dollar through offering an online service. Favorably, there are freelance sites that pay freelancers in dollars)
• Alternatively, you can fund your foreign PayPal account by transferring funds to it from your Nigerian PayPal account. But since the Nigerian PayPal account is restricted from receiving funds (from foreign sources), the best way to fund the account is to link it with your (Nigerian) debit card that supports the U.S dollar. You can visit the link here to find out how to fund your Nigerian PayPal account using your debit card
• Look out for individuals –family, friends, etc. –with dollar funds they want to convert to naira. Demand that they transfer the dollar funds from their online wallets to your foreign (business) PayPal account. Since it’s arbitrage business, and your goal is to make profit through fund resale, endeavor to negotiate a favorable (buying) rate with them. For instance, it may seem reasonable to buy dollars from friends at a rate less than #410 per dollar given that you can eventually resell the dollars at a higher rate –perhaps #415 per dollar –via Binance
• Move the funds in your Nigerian PayPal account to the foreign PayPal account. Note that it takes PayPal up to 48 hours to confirm your payment after fund transfer from Nigerian PayPal to foreign PayPal. This means that after the transfer, you need to wait for two days before you can have access to the foreign PayPal funds
• To be able to sell your foreign PayPal funds via the P2P exchange Binance, you should withdraw the funds into your Wise account. You may visit the link here to find out how you can create and verify a Wise account within minutes

Finally, note that PayPal charges conversion rates and fees that are considered somewhat expensive. This is why you may want to favor choosing simple arbitrage above any other form of arbitrage. By simple arbitrage, you needn’t convert from one currency to another since you’ll have to buy at a low price and sell at a high price using the same currency. For each $100 that you convert, PayPal charges as high as $5, but by adopting the simple arbitrage strategy, you can easily save yourself this expensive PayPal fee.

What Are the Best Sources of Funds for Your PayPal Arbitrage Business?

Earlier in this post, we mentioned that one of the requirements for starting a PayPal arbitrage business is to have a means for generating funds (in your preferred arbitrage currency) for your foreign PayPal account. Since, we suppose, the U.S. dollar is your preferred currency for the PayPal arbitrage business in Nigeria, you need to fund your foreign PayPal account with dollars.

Based on credible findings, there are various ways you can fund your foreign PayPal account with the U.S. dollar. Better known as the sources of funds for PayPal arbitrage, these ways are as follows:

Rendering a Professional Service on a Freelance Website

There are freelance sites that allow you to receive payments via your foreign PayPal account. By working as a copywriter, freelance content writer or content marketer on such sites, you can easily fund the PayPal account through your freelancing earnings.

Buying Dollar from an Exchange Platform

Although risky, buying dollars from an exchange platform is one of the ways you can fund your foreign PayPal account with the U.S. dollar. For this to work, you really need to find a seller willing to receive your local currency (the naira in this case) in exchange for an equivalent US$ amount depending on the agreed rate. You’ll pay the other party in naira and they will send the US$ to your foreign PayPal account. The associated risk is that there are crooked individuals parading themselves as sellers but whose ulterior motive is to scam others.

Your arbitrage strategy herein may be simply viewed as buying the U.S. dollar from an exchange where the (naira-to-dollar) rate is relatively low and then quickly reselling the currency (dollar) on another exchange where the rate is favorably high.

Buying Dollars from Family and Friends

How this works is by doing business with family, friends or a random individual with dollars that they are willing to sell (convert to naira). While they’ll have to transfer the dollars to your foreign PayPal account, you should be ready to send them an equivalent naira amount depending on your agreed exchange rate. The strategy that helps you profit here is to ensure you always bring the sellers to agree to a rate lower than the one at which you’ll eventually sell the dollars Binance (or another preferred top exchange).

Conclusion

PayPal arbitrage is definitely a lucrative business you can do in Nigeria irrespective of the restrictions on Nigerian PayPal. If you’re able to follow the startup guide provided in this post, we’re sure that you’ll find it pretty easy to begin a profitable PayPal arbitrage business in Nigeria.