Baidu partners with Paypal to tap China’s payments market

According to a Reuters report, China’s Baidu has entered into a partnership with PayPal to tap the overseas merchants as Chinese tech companies ramp up the fight for overseas payment partnerships.

Baidu’s payment platform, Baidu Wallet, will be accepted by roughly 17 million PayPal merchants globally, the Chinese firm said.

“With Baidu, PayPal will be able to offer millions of international merchants increased access to millions of consumers in China who can search, shop and discover the world through Baidu and Baidu Wallet,” said Dan Schulman, president and chief executive of PayPal.

“Partnering with PayPal on technology and product innovation will provide Baidu users with the ultimate cross-border consumer experience,” said Baidu senior vice president Guang Zhu.

The deal comes as China’s top payment firms, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd affiliate Ant Financial and Tencent Holdings Ltd, are making aggressive moves to expand their payment networks overseas.

This year Ant Financial entered a $1.2 billion bid for U.S. remittance firm MoneyGram International Inc, a deal that has attracted scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers who say it could threaten national security. The company has also purchased stakes in half a dozen payment firms across Asia as part of a plan to expand its finance business outside of China.

Tencent’s WeChat Pay has also inked a series of partnerships with global payment firms and earlier this month said it has applied directly for a Malaysian payments license.

Paypal entered into new partnerships with Apple Inc and Bank of America this month. It has also targeted Southeast Asian markets recently through local partnerships, but earlier attempts to enter the Chinese market directly have been unsuccessful due to tight regulation and strong local players.

Baidu Wallet, the 10th-biggest third-party payment platform in China, has roughly 100 million users and still trails behind Tencent’s WeChat and Ant Financial’s Alipay in terms of users and global reach.