Alibaba may work with PayPal to expand payment options: Report

Alibaba is open to working with eBay’s PayPal to expand its payment options, Bloomberg reported, citing an interview with the Chinese e-commerce company’s vice chairman. “If you look at our footprint of being the largest online payment company in China, and PayPal’s position of having a very good international position, not just in the U.S. but also in some other countries, these are some complementary footprints,” Joseph Tsai said Monday in Hangzhou, China. Alibaba reported more than $9 billion in sales on China’s Singles’ Day on Tuesday. The company also sees Apple’s payment system as helping Chinese consumers when Alibaba’s financial services arm, Alipay, is not accepted, Tsai said. In September,  eBay said it would spin off PayPal into a publicly traded company in the second half of 2015. Alibaba and eBay could not immediately be reached for comment. Whether eBay decided to spin off all or part of PayPal and what structure it would take remained unclear. A PayPal spinoff would mark an about-face for the company. EBay CEO John Donahoe has resisted demands by activist investor Carl Icahn to hive off the payments service, saying PayPal was integral to eBay’s business – and vice versa – and a split would not make sense. With inputs from Reuters