China's Alibaba to pass Amazon, eBay in transaction value: executive

(Reuters) - China's largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group, expects to sell merchandise this year worth more than that sold by Amazon Inc and eBay combined, Alibaba's chief strategy officer said on Saturday.

The company is aiming for 3 trillion yuan ($473 billion) in annual transaction value from its Taobao e-commerce units in the next 5 to 7 years, Zeng Ming told reporters.

Alibaba's founder, Jack Ma, said last year that Taobao's transaction value for 2012 would reach 1 trillion yuan. The company has not said what percentage of online sales come from Taobao, but it is the crown jewel of the Alibaba Group and its profit engine.

"From their annual reports we did a rough calculation and we were similar last year but we are growing faster than them this year, so this year we are probably larger than them," Zeng said of Amazon and eBay, America's top online retailer and auction site.

"The gap is just going to get bigger and bigger when we grow faster," he said.

In May, Alibaba ended more than two years of often fractious negotiations with Yahoo Inc to buy back much of a stake held by the U.S. web giant and, crucially, reduce the voting power of foreign stakeholders including Yahoo and Japan's Softbank Corp.

As part of the deal with Yahoo, there are incentives for Alibaba to list its shares by December 2015. The company has said there is no timetable for a listing. This year, Alibaba took its Alibaba.com unit private.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Writing by John Ruwitch; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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PayPal brings digital wallet to merchants through Discover

PayPal and Discover said today that they will partner to bring PayPal's digital wallet and payment services to millions of merchants in the Discover network.

Under the partnership, merchants in the Discover payment network will be able to accept PayPal payments. PayPal said that consumers would be able to take advantage of its services at these merchants.
PayPal, which has long handled online transactions, has attempted to breach the physical world with several mobile payment initiatives. From exploring the use of physical cards to the use of tap-and-go stickers, and even paying with smartphones, the company wants to be a legitimate player in the payments world, both in online merchants and brick-and-mortar stores.
"This relationship quickly extends PayPal's reach to millions of merchant locations nationwide and is a milestone moment for us that will create new benefits for Discover merchants without requiring new hardware or software," said Don Kingsborough, vice president of retail for PayPal


A deal with Discover helps establish PayPal's physical footprint. While Discover is a distant fourth player in the payments business, behind Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, it still has an impressively large payments network.
Consumers will be able to use their PayPal digital wallet, although the companies haven't specified how they payments will be made. CNET contacted PayPal for more details, and we'll update the story when the company responds.
The service will roll out next year. The companies said that merchants will not have to upgrade any of their equipment to use the service. The need for new terminals with different payment technology has been one of the stumbling blocks for more ambitious mobile-payment projects, including Google Wallet and the telecom payments joint venture Isis.

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