Alibaba have just announced reaching the milestone of 1 million registered users in the UK. They give access to 61 million businesses in over 240 countries around the world.
Alibaba are growing at around 27,000 new users per month in the UK and with the introduction of AliExpress enabling purchases of quantities as low as single units have done much to make sourcing goods overseas easy.
Now PayPal have announced decided that PayPal will no longer be a payment option on AliExpress after the 3rd of August. Having been “delighted to let you know that PayPal is now available on AliExpress” in April 2010 they now say “PayPal remains deeply committed to China by providing Chinese merchants access to a safer and easier way to sell to millions of our users all over the world.”
Sabrina Peng, Vice President of Alibaba said “AliExpress is committed to serving our customers with choice in payment options”, so I’m guessing that it’s not Alibaba who wanted to part company. If PayPal do want to be a defacto payment option why are they denying 1 million UK customers the ability to pay with PayPal on the Alibaba platform?
26 Responses
“If PayPal do want to be a defacto payment option why are they denying 1 million UK customers the ability to pay with PayPal on the Alibaba platform?”
Thats a really curious question there Chris, I’m sure this will be uncovered in the next few days/weeks from them.
Matt
I find myself wondering what is involved in Paypal serviciong Alibaba Customers. Obviously the initial setting up of the system to allow such transactions may have had some cost. But that was achieved way back in 2010. So unless there are any continuing costs involved I find myself wondering what the problem could be. Perhaps the turnover was not up to estimate. But surely as Alibaba grows in such as the UK this can be expected to catch up with any shortfall in the original estimates. Of course there could be Political Considerations especially with making it that much easier for small customers being able to source from China but in the present Global Market if such as Paypal drops out of this market you can almost guarantee that somebody else will be looking at it with the idea of taking over. I must admit that the more I think about it the more confused I am.
INR claims……..all the way from china
With the rise of China and Asia, is this a good move by Paypal. Then again, I’m not a big fan of Paypal myself.
Paypal want customers to buy from Chinese sellers on eBay. Simple.
In my opinion it is probably political pressure from government lobbies – this has happened before with paypal and political lobbying. They have banned the sellers of items that were politically unpopular. Paypal treads a fine line over monopoly issues in both the US and UK (again – my opinion) and for that reason there will be political bods they don’t wish to upset. Of course, it is also a way of putting a short-term spoke in the wheel of a competitor’s growth.
come on guys get real
its only common sense for ebay/paypal not to help a rival
Shedding the fleamarket image.
I thought Alibaba were launching their own payment company like Paypal…or did I make that up? Perhaps it is to do with that?
I wonder why exactly has Paypal dropped Alibaba’s Aliexpress.com service?
Quite possibly it is related to the large number of complaints from customers due to the very high level of criminals and fraudsters trading on these sites…
cant see where paypal would get a dodgy image, if I were a buyer I would insist on paypal payment
its near impossible to loose your money
using paypal, as long as you follow quite sensible and easy guidelines
Even though Paypal is a large payment platform there are many more options available, so I cannot see Alibaba being that bothered.
It has to be that fact that aliexpress has alot of scammers selling things that they do not have. There is no telling how many Item Not Recieved Claims paypal has processed from aliexpress. Under paypals new policy you will recieve a full refund on all goods purchased now through paypal, accept donwloaded items etc…. and services. On August 3 2011 you will no longer be able to use paypal to purchase goods from aliexpress or alibaba.