PayPal Asia major initiative, plans to enter China India online payment market

"Sadie Network News" March 20, according to foreign media reports, ebay's PayPal program to enter China and India online payment market. This is a major move PayPal has taken in Asia.

Businesses in India and China are now using PayPal's services to make cross-border payments overseas. However, PayPal now offers online payment services that are used within both countries.

Dickson Seow, a PayPal spokeswoman, said in Monday that we are currently applying for a domestic payment permit in China and will also apply for such a permit in India in the future. He added that it is not clear when the company will be able to obtain a licence.

China has a bigger online market in both China and India. China has 193 million e-commerce users, according to China's Internet Information Center.

In China, PayPal may encounter fierce competition from China's E-commerce giant, Alibaba's Alipay (Alipay). Alibaba and ebay's joint ventures in China are already competing in the Consumer-to-consumer E-commerce Arena.

Alipay accounts for 46.9% of China's online third party payment market, according to Beijing Analysys International. In the fourth quarter of 2011, China's third party payment market total turnover reached 738.6 billion yuan (about 117 billion U.S. dollars).

Zhang Meng, an international analyst at Analysys, said the competition was fierce if PayPal focused on entering China's Internet online payment market.

However, PayPal will also face difficulties in obtaining a payment service license from the Chinese government. Since the Chinese government has required all non-financial institutions offering online payment services to be Chinese-owned companies, Alibaba, which includes Yahoo and SoftBank shareholders, has been forced to divest Alipay as an independent company.