PayPal seeking a place beside Alipay and WeChat in China’s booming online payment market
The US company is targeting foreign buyers who shop online in China as a first step, and wants to cooperate with other payment firms
China’s online payment market is pretty much sewn up by technology giants Alibaba Group, through its Alipay system, and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay, but PayPal, the US company that dates back to the early days of online banking, thinks it has found a way to get a foothold.
It wants to help foreign consumers shop in Chinese online stores.
“PayPal is well known among foreign consumers [especially in the US], and is considered a safe payment method when buying products in China’s online shops,” said Lu Liuliu, head of China merchants services at PayPal. “I think PayPal has its an advantage even though China’s online payment market is seeing explosive growth.”
PayPal’s own data shows China became the most popular cross-border online shopping destination globally in 2016, followed by the US and the UK. One-third of PayPal’s 210 million users have bought products from Chinese retail websites.
The company has reached an agreement with Chinese internet firm Baidu in July that connects online payment service Baidu Wallet’s 700 million Chinese shoppers with 17 million PayPal merchants. It is also seeking opportunities to cooperate with China’s major online payment operators, Lu said, without giving further details.