Paypal China is now online. Despite articles (Reuters & WSJ) which says the service will be launched by “end of the year,” the service is now available online. Couple of interesting notes,

1. Looks like the service is free for merchants and for p2p transactions, eBay is getting aggressive with pricing to compete with Alibaba
2. Partners with the same banks as Alipay - China Merchants Bank and China Construction Bank
3. No escrow, instead it’s betting that Buyer Protection is good enough to compete for “trust”
4. The lack of escrow will also translates to transaction simplicity/ease of use which Paypal hopes to be a competitive advantage
5. Alipay claims to process US$12M in payments a month, so Paypal will have a ways to go
6. Paypal brand name in Chinese is “treasure” “spelled backwards” - ie the two Chinese characters are switched. Interesting to note that while it is a phonetic translation - its sounds like PayPal in English, the name also plays on the word “treasure” which is a prominent brand word/character that Taoboa (”Find Treasure”) and AliPay (”Payment Treasure”) employs prominently. Dont think its a coincidence despite the phonetic similarity to English that the PayPal Chinese team decided to use the word “treasure.”