EBay Inc’s PayPal is one of the largest names in the online payment industry. Now the company is planning to tap the Chinese markets.
PayPal services are already used by merchants in the country to facilitate cross-border international payments. The company’s plan is to make its online payment services available for domestic use as well.
“We are currently applying for a domestic payment license in China,” said PayPal spokesman Dickson Seow on Monday. The company also announced the intensions to enter the Indian market in the future.
China has a big online market with 193 million e-commerce users, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
China’s e-commerce is expected to surpass 750 billion yuan (118 billion U.S. dollars) this year and it is set to become the world’s largest e-commerce market in 2015, according to a Reuters report citing industry figures.
In China, PayPal will potentially face off against AliPay, a payments company under local e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.
Alipay currently has the largest share of China’s online third-party payment market, at 46.9 percent, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. It defines the third-party payment market as consisting of non-banking commercial organizations.
“If PayPal focuses on entering China’s Internet online payment market, the competition will be fierce,” said Zhang Meng, an analyst with Analysys. “The domestic companies have already established themselves.”
Xinhua