A new report released by Internet Retailer showed that there is a significant amount of Chinese customers who made transactions via PayPal. Transactions from China accounted for 25 percent or 40 million customers.
China is a large consumer base for e-commerce. Chinese online retailers sold $589 billion worth of goods in 2015 which is an increase of 33 percent from the previous year.
For 400 million domestic buyers, the two most preferred platforms are WePay and Alipay but there is a significant number of international buyers who use PayPal.
Alizila, the news portal of the Alibaba Group, explained that the growth of e-commerce in China is mainly due to the changes in purchasing behavior of the country's new middle class and the widespread use of smartphones.
According to the site, "Analysts reckon this is due to a combination of potent demographic and cultural trends that show no signs of abating: the growing spending power of upper middle class and affluent households; the coming of age of a generation of college-educated consumers; rising aspirations among hundreds of millions of people in China's less-developed cities and rural areas; a powerful shift away from shopping at brick-and-mortar stores to mobile e-commerce driven by widespread smartphone adoption."
Online marketing experts from eMarketer predict that e-commerce will likely grow for the next years.
The report released by the expert stated, "In 2019, China will spend more online than any other country: nearly $2 trillion, more than 3.6 times as much as the U.S."
They also predict that there will be 600 million online shoppers by 2019.
To meet this growing demand, PayPal recently formed a partnership with UnionPay credit and debit cards.
Bill Ready, a PayPal senior vice president, said, "To enable payments from the largest card network in China is quite material in terms of helping our merchants go connect with Chinese consumers."