PayPal has stepped up its efforts to conquer the Asia Pacific market, vowing to double its staff numbers in the region and inking an agreement with China UnionPay.
The eBay unit says it will increase employee numbers in the region to 2000 by the end of the year. More than 100 of these will be at its new international headquarters in Singapore, which represents all business outside of the US.
For the Singapore business headquarters and development centre, PayPal will be recruiting people based in the country with expertise in technology, product development, infrastructure design, risk and engineering.
New jobs will also be created at PayPal offices in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Taiwan as it looks to build its presence in a region that saw more the firm process $6 billion of total payment volume in 2009, an increase of 38% from 2008.
Farhad Irani, VP, Asia Pacific, PayPal, says: "While PayPal's growth in Asia Pacific to date has largely been driven by our cross border business, we fully expect the domestic business in many of our Asian markets to explode in the coming years."
Meanwhile, China UnionPay card members can now use PayPal to shop online, opening up 2.1 billion cards to international retailers.
Scott Thompson, president, PayPal, says: "After years of being the export hub for the world, today marks the day that China is open for business as an import e-commerce market."
Another deal has been struck with Singapore's DBS bank and the US firm has also made its mobile payment software development kit (SDK) available to developers in the region.