PayPal to tap domestic e-payments market in India, China

Visitors walk past an Ebay and PayPal banner at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona February 28, 2012.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - EBay Inc's unit PayPal is expanding its domestic electronics payments presence in Asia with plans to tap India and China, the region's biggest consumer markets, a senior executive said on Friday.

PayPal's domestic e-payments system is already available in Asia in countries such as Japan and Australia, where the e-commerce market is more mature and consumers are more used to paying with their credit cards online, executives said.

"Today, PayPal is used mainly for cross-border international payments for both countries," Rupert Keely, PayPal's senior vice president for Asia Pacific, told Reuters in reference to China and India. "The plan is to try to enter both markets for domestic payments."

Keely said PayPal had applied to China's central bank for a licence, while there were similar plans for India in future.

"In India, we're seeking to establish an office to enter the market next year for domestic payments," he said.

In China, the online payments market is now dominated by Alibaba Group's Alipay and Tencent Holdings Ltd's Tenpay, while in India, active players include CCAvenue and DirecPay.

China and India's e-commerce sectors are booming with rapid economic growth fuelling domestic consumption.

In China, e-commerce is expected to surpass 750 billion yuan this year and it is set to become the world's largest e-commerce market in 2015, industry figures showed.

In India, the e-commerce market is expected to grow by 47 percent to more than 460 billion rupees this year, according to the industry group Internet and Mobile Association of India.

PayPal on Thursday launched a new service called PayPal Here targeted at small and medium businesses to allow them to accept credit and debit card payments via mobile devices, such as smartphones.

The service is available in the United States, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, PayPal said.

(Reporting by Lee Chyen Yee; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)