As far as the rest of the world is concerned, PayPal is one of the leading solutions for conducting internet transactions, whose services can be more commonly found on websites such as eBay, but now it looks like it could be facing a new competitor in the form of Alipay, which is China’s answer to PayPal.
The service has been around for awhile now, but has been limited to China’s residents and internal transactions. This seems to be like a twist of the knife in PayPal’s back, especially since the company was forced to operate two companies – one specifically handling internal transactions within China, and another to handle international payments.
Alipay is now seeking to expand and cross-borders and have been reported to be in talks with international credit card companies. These talks are said to be about facilitating cross-border transactions, which ultimately would allow international buyers to purchase directly from Chinese online websites, as long as the site ships internationally and the user has both a credit card and an Alipay account. Anyone else excited at the prospect of being able to buy direct from China?
Filed in . Read more about China, Credit Card, International and Paypal.