PayPal Expands Global Reach with MercadoLibre Agreement

PayPal expanded its international reach through a new agreement with MercadoLibre, one of the largest online commerce and payments ecosystems in Latin America. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman made the announcement in a post on LinkedIn on Monday, stating in part the following:

“As part of the agreement, PayPal will be made available as a payment option in the Mercado Pago online checkout for people in Brazil and Mexico, which opens the door for PayPal’s 300 million customers to shop at hundreds of thousands of new merchants.

“PayPal will also be accepted in the MercadoLibre marketplace in Brazil and Mexico for cross-border purchases.

“Similarly, we will offer Mercado Pago as a payment method at PayPal merchants around the world, allowing more than 48 million Mercado Pago users in Brazil and Mexico to pay with the method they love and trust.

“Additionally, we will expand Xoom’s presence by allowing Mercado Pago users to receive remittances into their Mercado Pago wallet initially in Mexico and Brazil.”

It’s interesting to note that PayPal’s former parent company eBay Inc. had sold the majority of its stake in MercadoLibre Inc. in 2016, explaining at the time that it had entered into a strategic agreement with MercadoLibre in 2001, “when MercadoLibre acquired iBazar Com Ltda, the Brazilian subsidiary of iBazar SA, which previously had been acquired by eBay.”

Pymnts.com has more background on the relationship between PayPal and MercadoLibre, which it called “the eBay of Latin America.”

PayPal’s geographic expansion also includes China, with the company announcing earlier this month it had completed the acquisition of a 70% equity interest in Guofubao Information Technology Co., Ltd. (GoPay), which it said made PayPal the first foreign payments platform licensed to provide online payment services in China.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.