Old news to some but I have been meaning to write about it for some time…. E-commerce in China has always been tightly controlled and requires a lot of capital to get going. A lot of foreign entrepreneurs dream of the Chinese market but are stopped by this, and in turn, Chinese customers are stopped through buying online through foreign transfers (even most Visa and Mastercards!).

China’s top provider of electronic payment serviceswill tie up with online payment platform PayPal, the two companies said, in a move that will let Chinese customers buy from overseas merchants.

So it’s no surprise that this news of linking the countries is good news (although it’s interesting to read 2 comments, one about Googles departure). Under what rules we don’t know, for sure it won’t be as easy as it sounds, but it will supply an avenue through the PayPal API which is 10 times better and more advanced than all the Chinese banks and payment gateway API’s put together (error codes anyone?).

We have been implementing PayPal’s chained payments on a current customer, along with authorised payments, and like the new feature. Perhaps this can be part of the whole fanfare to allow some protection for buyers and sellers (and some great new apps!).

Watch this space!