US-based PayPal, part of eBay, will
be hard pressed to retain its position as the world’s largest
provider of online alternate payments for much longer, at least in
terms of account holders. Hard on PayPal’s heels is China’s largest
e-commerce service, Alipay, which by the end of February 2009 had
notched up its 150 millionth registered user.
The vast majority of Alipay’s registered users
are individuals, while around 460,000 are businesses or online
merchants.
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Though still trailing the 175 million
registered users reported by PayPal at the end of 2008, Alipay is
gaining ground fast – having between August 2008 and February 2009
gained 50 million new users, 20 million of these being added in the
first two months of 2009.
In terms of the value of payments, however,
PayPal appears at least for now to be in no danger of losing its
current position as the world’s leading online payments service. In
2008, eBay reported its payments operations had handled
transactions valued at $60.1 billion, up 26.6 percent compared with
2007.
Alibaba, Alipay’s parent group, has not
provided annual data for payment values. However, it has revealed
Alipay’s total daily transaction value has increased from CNY450
million ($66 million) at the end of August 2008 to up to CNY700
million in February 2009. On an annualised basis this indicates a
total transaction value of some $37 billion, almost two-thirds of
the total achieved by PayPal in 2008.
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