Does PayPal work in Armenia?

“This job is such a great fit for me,” I thought to myself when I came across the job listing several years ago. Many of the remote work opportunities I saw offered much better benefits than the job offers I had received in Armenia. Providing location independence, reduced commuting time, improved time management and higher pay, remote work seemed to encompass what I had always looked for in the past. But when I came across the mentioned job listing, it best aligned with my financial and time-management goals and my professional passions and interests. As I prepared to proceed to the application form, I noticed one of the last sentences of the job description that changed my happy facial expression into one of disappointment. It stated that payments would be made only via Paypal and two other virtual platforms whose names I can no longer remember, none of which were functional in Armenia. 

This was my first but not last experience in which I was unable to apply for a position simply because it required a PayPal account. The unavailability of PayPal in Armenia has affected not only me but also many of my friends who have a perfect command of the English language and have both the ability and the willingness to work remotely but cannot do so because of the lack of an internationally recognized and accepted payment method. I have heard of cases in which employers agreed to make exceptions and pay salaries in methods different from PayPal, giving preference to wire and bank transfers. Yet they often regretted their decision, since the fees associated with wire and bank transfers sometimes constitute a significant cost. As a result, the employer has to choose between transferring the payment only once a month or every two months (instead of regular weekly or biweekly payments), continuing with weekly/biweekly payments while wasting too much money on transfers or firing the employee.