Online payment provider PayPal is to launch independently in
Japan, the first time it has entered a market without the presence
of parent company eBay, the auction website.
eBay has largely been absent in the Japanese market since 2002,
conceding to the leading auction market Yahoo Japan. It means
PayPal will need to sign up merchants and consumers rather than
rely on transactions through transactions made on the eBay website,
a departure from its usual strategy.
At a press conference in Tokyo, Andrew Pipolo, who heads up
PayPal’s operations in Japan, said it made sense to roll out the
service in Japan, the world’s second-largest economy. Transactions
in the country totalled 6.7 trillion yen ($76 billion) last year,
which is predicted to almost double to 12.2 trillion yen ($139
billion) by 2014. PayPal has set up a new office in Tokyo employing
20 people and will have 2,000 staff in Asia by the end of the
year.
“We’re very, very new, we have a very small share of the market,
so we still see great opportunities for Japan,” said Pipolo.
With over 87 million accounts worldwide and the ability to deal
in 24 currencies, PayPal will market itself to Japanese retailers
as the easy way to handle sales abroad.
Following the announcement of eBay’s results for the April-June
quarter, John Donahue, CEO of eBay said he believes PayPal will
grow to be larger than its online e-commerce sites in the next few
years.
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