14 DAY TRIAL // PayPal seems to be doing quite well, and the latest financial reports seem to be indicating the same, and the eBay-owned company is looking to expand aggressively in Asia. It plans to double the number of its current employees with hires at most of its offices in the region including the international headquarters in Singapore. PayPal says that the Asian market is becoming increasingly interesting also from the business point of view.
“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,” Farhad Irani, vice president of PayPal Asia Pacific, said. “Our success in the region will continue to rely on partnering with merchants, financial services companies and local governments to deliver the right services for our customers.”
PayPal employees total some 1,000 people in the region, but it is looking to get to about 2,000 by the end of 2010. 100 of those will be at its Singapore headquarters, which handle business for everywhere outside the US. In fact, PayPal took the time to underline just how good it was having it in Singapore, a veritable land of plenty if you take its word on it, so it must be getting a pretty sweet deal from the local government. All seven PayPal offices in the region, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, will be adding people.
The payment service says business is booming in Asia and the transaction volume increased by 38 percent in 2009 from the previous year. In total, PayPal processed $6 billion in transactions in the Asia Pacific region last year. Of course, PayPal handled $21.4 billion in transactions worldwide in the fourth quarter alone. Also, not all of its operations in the region are going so smoothly.