PayPal Ups Game, Buys Rest Of Payments Platform GoPay In China

PayPal has become the first foreign company to own 100 percent of a payments platform in China as the financial technology company gobbled up the rest of GoPay, according to a Thursday (Jan. 14) Reuters report.

PayPal had acquired a 70 percent equity stake in GoPay, officially known as Guofubao Information Technology, in late 2019. At the time, PayPal said it was the FinTech’s first foreign online-only payments platform.

And it was the first foreign company licensed to provide online payment services in China.

“This important step will allow us to be a stronger partner to Chinese financial institutions and technology platforms,” PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman said when the firm launched its foray into China.

John Rainey, PayPal’s chief financial officer, added that the company was looking to make more deals in China. “There’s a lot of opportunities to acquire companies inorganically,” he said.

GoPay is licensed for digital and mobile transactions and operates similar to PayPal. The payments market in China is currently dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba spinoff Ant Group, and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings.

The Global Times said shareholder data shows that Cofortune Information Technology Co. had now sold its 30 percent stake in GoPay.

Financial details weren’t disclosed in the data, which showed the deal was sealed Dec. 31, reported Reuters. PayPal declined comment.

The new GoPay purchase comes amid Beijing regulators’ crackdown on Ant Group. And the competition in the booming market for online payments may be heating up.

“We see ourselves as China’s PayPal in cross-border businesses,” Bill Deng, chief executive and co-founder of startup XTransfer, told Reuters. The Shanghai-based payments platform facilitates cross-border money transfers for Chinese merchants.

Last August, PayPal made Hannah Qiu as head of the China business. Reuters said. Qiu was a former executive at insurer Ping An Group’s FinTech unit OneConnect.