YEREVAN, March 16. /ARKA/. Armenian users began an online signature collection campaign for the full launch of the PayPal payment system in the country. The petition will be sent to the government, Central Bank, the ministries of finance and economy.

The petition says PayPal is one of the most popular electronic payment systems in the world and indispensable, especially when making purchases from eBay or Amazon. It is also used broadly by programmers, bloggers and companies providing commercial on-line services.

"For several years, the authorities of Armenia would say their applications to PayPal were rejected, however, the same government agencies failed to conduct a serious research over these years to find out the system's turnover potential in the country," the petition says.

According to the petition, the launch of PayPal will bring about the possibility of additional income for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as help expand the sales market.

The collection of signatures started on March 15 evening and during the first our it was signed by about 1,500 users. Currently there are 4,500 signatures. It needs to have 5,000 signatures to be considered by the government.

From 2014 Armenian PayPal users can cash out their accounts by using the Armenian Idram payment system that converts a PayPal account to electronic Idram money, after which they can be cashed.

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world's largest Internet payment companies. The company operates as an acquirer performing payment processing for online vendors, auction sites and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.

Established in 1998, PayPal had its IPO in 2002, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year. In 2014, PayPal moved $228 billion in 26 currencies across more than 190 nations, generating a total revenue of $7.9 billion (44% of eBay’s total profits). The same year, eBay announced plans to spin-off PayPal into an independent company by mid-2015 and was completed on July 18, 2015.-0-