Association of Online Commerce: Post-Soviet Countries Blocked on ETSY

ETSY payment system was not accessible for the CIS countries and payments could not be transferred to bank accounts, the association founder Levan Molashvili told Business Partner.

PayPal is an alternative platform, but this system was easily misused for the so-called machinations, primarily from Russia and Ukraine and ETSY was bearing losses, Molashvili noted. “When this bad practice spread widely, the international sales platform fully blocked the Post-Soviet space, despite this practice had not taken place in Georgia.

Despite these measures, we have found an alternative way to enable Georgian companies to keep selling their products on ETSY.com, because this is a very important platform for many Georgian startups. Regretfully, we cannot pass official registration anymore, but we hope that Etsy Payment also enters our country and Georgia officially continues commerce operations.

The platform had registered 27,000 Georgian products and the figure has decreased to approximately 25,000 items. On Etsy Georgia, we have already registered 1,000 stores. For 4 years, we have provided many jobs to popularize the Etsy platform among Georgian consumers. We continue working to adopt various international platforms in Georgia”, Levan Molashvili said.