Rumor: Alibaba Secretly Opens Talks for PayPal Support
Tencent Tech, 3/11/10
Due to a downturn in small foreign trade business, David Wei, CEO of B2B e-commerce site Alibaba.com (1688.HK), has reportedly entered secret discussions with rival eBay to obtain PayPal support for Alibaba.com in order to appeal to overseas buyers, said an industry source. The two sides are said to have reached a tentative agreement, with eBay agreeing to Alibaba's request for cooperation and dispatching a team to assist Alibaba's relevant businesses. According to the source, complete PayPal support will be available on the small-scale wholesale e-commerce platform AliExpress this April.
The source claimed that though AliExpress has made headway with domestic buyers since the platform launched in July last year, it has been more difficult to cultivate the international market, as Alipay is not widely adopted. The source added that Alibaba has released tools in the past that assisted users at rival sites in migrating their stores to Alibaba, directly encouraging users to leave competitors such as eBay, though it is not known how successful the effort was.
Keywords: online payment David Wei B2B e-commerce eBay Internet overseas Alipay PayPal Alibaba 1688.HK AliExpress
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