It’s not going to be a good Christmas, or chances are even the new year, for Adsense publishers in some 14 Asian countries. Many publishers, who rely on Western Union for, were not able to receive Adsense payments for this month. Google Adsense sends automatic payments on 25th (not a hard and fast date though) of each month. Other payment options for Adsense like Wire Transfer to bank account and payments via checks seem to work just fine.
Publishers who have set Western Union as their default payment option received the following message:
Automatic payment declined: Western Union for ($xxx.xx). No reason provided by your financial institution
Payment declined: We were unable to charge your payment method.
According to an unverified source, Google made this blogpost:
We’re expanding the number of Western Union payments that we’re sending through our new payments system this month, primarily to publishers in the Asia-Pacific region. A small number (~5%) of the payments we sent to publishers in the following countries were incorrectly declined by Western Union and need to be re-issued.
No action is required on your part. We are working with Western Union to complete the configuration changes and will automatically reissue the payments. We expect to complete this in the next 24 hours.
Affected countries:
- Egypt
- Saudi Arabia
- Cambodia
- China
- Indonesia
- Malaysia
- Nepal
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Taiwan
- Thailand
- Vietnam
Thanks for your patience, and we’re working to resolve this quickly
It is still unclear whether the payments would be forwarded to the next month or Adsense and Western Union are working something out to send the payment this month.
It’s not the first time such issue has been faced, many South Asian countries have been facing issues with Adsense since its inception. A few years back, countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh etc were hit by a massive account ban which resulted in permanent ban of Adsense accounts involved in breaking the Adsense policies.
Last year, Adsense blocked all kind of payments to Pakistan but the issue was resolved within a week.
South Asian countries share a huge chunk of online work force including freelancers, bloggers and publishers. Each day, a number of newbies enter the digital arena to make money online but many end up following the illegitimate methods.
It is a matter of fact that South Asian countries among a few others are labeled blacklisted by major advertisers due to ever growing illegitimate methods of earning money originating from these regions.
