eBay Inc. are continuing their assault on emerging markets across the planet. Yesterday, it was announced that PayPal will now be processing payments in Rubles. It’s all part of a move to tap into the burgeoning Russian ecommerce market. Predictions from bank Morgan Stanley suggest Russian ecommerce will grow by 35% annually into 2015 and reach $36 billion.
According to the Wall Street Journal: “Russia’s Internet-savvy middle class is increasingly turning to online stores, but many are apprehensive about handing over their credit card details. PayPal hopes to assuage those fears and simplify the payment procedure.”
PayPal has teamed up with 12 of Russia’s top online retailers including KupiVIP.ru and Ozon.ru, to offer safe payments to Russian consumers. Vladimir Malugin, Russia regional director for PayPal said: “Our task is to make internet shopping easy and simple for the Russian clients.”
This isn’t a surprise. Russia has a strong and growing economy which is increasingly of interest to global investors and eBay Inc. has had its eye on Russia for at least a year since it opened a Moscow office. Earlier in 2013, the Russian Central Bank liberalised laws to permit financial transactiosn to be made by organisations other than banks. PayPal have clearly taken adevantage of that rule change.
3 Responses
As far a Ebay sales are concerned I stopped selling to Russia earlier this year due to the backlog of post held at Russias sorting office , have they sorted this now? There is no use doing international sales or making it easier for Russian customers to buy if their postal system isn’t reliable. If they have implemented improvements to the postal system then I can see there is a market for sales from this country.
Very good, now all that needs to happen is for the Russian postal service to actually deliver the parcels that have been paid for – I blocked sending to Russia some time ago and will still continue to do so.
I agree we have stopped sending to Russia as well, I think every item went missing. Speaking to a European courier they also had stopped sending items to Russia, even tracked parcels. They got to the Russian Customs and that was it, I have wondered if they are the “best dressed” Customer Officers in the world!!