CreditCards.com.au - Australian Credit Cards Online

23 November 2009

PayPal Australia has continued its plans to dominate the online selling market after previously releasing its software base coding to all web users in an effort to create the ideal online payment systems.

On top of this move, the new managing director of PayPal has stated that PayPal intends to have every single Australian business, all merchants that sell products or services online, signed up to the PayPal system within the next few years. PayPal already has seven million Australian accounts from only four years of operation and is used for around 90 per cent of all online payment transactions.

Frerk-Malte Feller, the new managing director of PayPal, says that while PayPal Australia has superior market traction, the company has great potential to expand further, hence the recent spate of new plans for the company that will expand it into new markets and bring on new customers.

According to The Sheet, Feller stated that "PayPal in Australia has the strongest or the second strongest market position globally. PayPal is very strong in the UK, and it is in these two markets where PayPal has the strongest consumer adoption rates.

"In Australia 27 per cent of online shoppers prefer to pay with PayPal, according to Nielsen, more than Visa or Mastercard or any other method and only in the UK do you see rates like that.

"We have good merchant take up here as well but we want more of course. I want to sign up every Australian online merchant and that is what we are aiming for."

Among these plans Feller says that there are some areas of the online shopping industry that Australians simply are not utilising, putting them behind other similar overseas markets.

According to Feller, while Australian online services and products excel in areas such as Government services and online travel sites, the retail market is significantly behind other overseas markets.

"It is in personal daily needs shopping that Europe and some other overseas markets are really much more advanced than Australia; clothing, nappies, etcetera. So contrary to some market projections, I think we will see a lot of strong growth here over the next couple of years in those areas.

"About three per cent of retail spending is online in Australia, whereas in the USA and the UK it is between six and eight per cent. Australian online shoppers spend about US$1000 per year online but in these other markets shoppers are spending 50 to 100 per cent more per year."

Earlier this month PayPal announced that it was releasing its software base code to all web users in order for individuals to create their ideal online payment systems, with the company now targeting Gen Y banks customers that are already familiar with the PayPal system. What's more, PayPal has said that it will also be targeting the physical banking industry.

PayPal has stated that it knows that it cannot satisfy everything that the massive online consumer industry demanded from an online payment system, hence its choice to open its software to users.

"In the past we tried to define the needs and make the solutions, but we don't know the whole story. The next 18 months are going to see massive changes and innovations in payments," says Dinuke Ranasinghe, PayPal's Australian former managing director.

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