[dosh]

Once this goes live, PayPal will sooner or later face stiff competition beyond its current stage under the umbrella of eBay, competing against Chinese players like those of alipay and tenpay which already have users in the hundreds of millions. These players are agressively looking into the markets outside of mainland China.

The landscape won't change in a few years, but in a decade, may look completely different.

[Shinkei]

I agree that they are companies with promise, and certainly will be strong in their domestic markets... but I remain skeptical of their success in the West. I personally would not directly support Chinese businesses if I have an equivalent Western business that I can support, not simply because of xenophobia or some nationalistic nonsense, but because what China does as a Government is reprehensible. For all its faults, America is still a shining emblem of Democracy when compared to other powers such as Russia and China.

[adventured]

Not only that, but China doesn't allow an even playing field in any regard what-so-ever in their domestic economy.

Foreign investors still can't own more than the majority share in a Chinese company.

China is anti-West when it comes to supporting their domestic companies. They block out major competitors, such as Google or Facebook, and they make life very difficult for anyone that attempts to compete with their domestic companies.

The crap Alibaba pulled in stealing tens of billions in wealth from Yahoo by spinning off Alipay without proper compensation and forcing Yahoo to sell half its stake in Alibaba is par for the course in China.

[adventured]

PayPal will probably be eaten by Visa (if it can pass anti-trust criticism, not easy).

Visa has a $134 billion market cap and is the payments juggernaut globally. I'd bet on them at least attempting to acquire PayPal.

To put Visa in perspective, their profit for 2013 was roughly 60% greater than Alibaba's.

[1337biz]

These would still have a massive trust issue in most parts of the "Western World". Certainly doable under the umbrella of buying an established western (banking) brand but Asian brands will have a hard time communicating trust, reliability and security.

[Igglyboo]

Even though it makes no sense, I'd rather use an unknown western banking company than an unknown asian banking company and I'm sure many feel the same.

[danvoell]

Maybe these competitors would want to invest/partner with paypal and splitting from Ebay opens up that opportunity

[phlakaton]

PayPal and AliPay have been in competition since 2005, when PayPal launched a payments platform in China. So... definitely sooner rather than later.