Amid the rise of e-wallets and mobile payment platforms in Asia-Pacific, PayPal is betting on its global reach and security infrastructure to keep its digital payments service relevant.
The region's online payments and e-commerce markets had seen significant progress in the last couple of years, fuelled largely by an active consumer ecosystem and various government efforts to digitise[1] the payments industry, said PayPal CTO Sri Shivananda, in an interview with ZDNet.
There also had been much innovation in the industry, he said, with both local and global players offering payment services touted to deliver improved customer experience.
In fact, various companies now offered their own e-wallets and mobile payment services including telcos such as Singtel's Dash[2], banks such as DBS's PayLah[3], e-commerce sites such as Alibaba's AliPay[4], messaging platforms such as Tencent's WeChat Pay[5], and ride-sharing operators such as Grab's GrabPay[6].
With these companies stepping up to close the payment loop, was there still room then for PayPal to play a role?
Shivananda believed so, pointing to the vendor's focus on security and expansive reach as competitive advantages. It also ensured user experience was seamless, he said.
This meant building a platform that not only provided security and trust, but also a more convenient way of paying for online transactions, he said. For instance, it would be cumbersome to repeatedly enter 16-number credit card details on small mobile screens to make purchases across several platforms, he said. PayPal users only needed to log into their account once and be able to transact with any of 18 million merchants that supported PayPal's platform worldwide.
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