The FINANCIAL — Global e-commerce business PayPal, allowing payments and money transfers through the internet has enabled merchant services to Georgian users. “Georgians are now able to send, receive and withdraw money with PayPal. This service aims to enable cross-border selling for Georgian merchants and businesses, thereby contributing to the growth of the digital economy in Georgia”, Mr. Damien Perillat, Managing Director of PayPal told The FINANCIAL.
PayPal entered the Georgian market in April 2013. The service is at the moment only available in English. PayPal Currently does not support Georgian national currency GEL. Balances can be hold in 26 currencies including euro, US dollars, Russian ruble.
Company is not planning to open an office in Georgia, Perillat told The FINANCIAL.
“Georgia is showing strong interest in e-commerce as consumers become more and more aware about the benefits it brings. Almost 80% of Georgian consumers state that they shop online and 29% claim they do this every week”, Perillat said.
“In 2013, when asked about the main challenges to implementation of e-commerce in this country, 17% Georgians indicated payment methods and 34% – security concerns1. Now, thanks to being able to send, receive and withdraw money with PayPal, we believe these obstacles won’t be true anymore for consumers and businesses using our platform”, Perillat said.
“The e-commerce market of Central and Eastern Europe may be one of the smallest when considering European regions but it has seen in fact the biggest growth in terms of percentage. The region accounted for a small share of the global B2C E-Commerce sales last year, dwarfed by the large double-digit shares of North America, Asia-Pacific and Western Europe. However, we see a very strong dynamic it terms of growth year over year, and also the emergence of new technology clusters especially in south-eastern Europe with some local companies emerging as global leaders”, Perillat said.
Q. What is the volume of PayPal transactions in Georgia? Please give us statistics of users, sales and transfers.
A. Regarding Georgia, we can share that only few days after enabling Georgians with receive and withdraw option, we already can observe a strong momentum. Moreover, we see this natural business corridor with the US shaping. This confirms the strong reception of PayPal by digital savvy Georgian consumers, with already tens of thousands of Georgian actively using the service.
To give you better perspective, we can also share some of the most recent information about our strong results in the first quarter of 2015. Our net total payment volume (TPV) grew 18% to $61 billion and we gained 3.6 million new active accounts in the quarter, up 11% to 165 million.
Regarding Central and Eastern Europe alone, for the last couple of years we’ve been able to observe rapid and steady growth of both online and mobile spend in the region and Georgia is an important part of this trend. We currently have over 4 million active consumers in the Central and Eastern Europe region.
PayPal has strong and established links with local ecosystem, with partnership with TBC bank being a great example. We want to bring together PayPal’s global online and mobile payment solutions along with Georgian businesses‘ extensive local market knowledge and great relationship with their consumers.
Introducing game-changing services in any market requires investment as well as careful planning and preparation. We take our responsibility to manage people’s money very seriously. It is important to remember that we plan step-by-step approach. Now we would prefer to focus on bringing innovation to the consumers, especially around the mobile, along with expanding our network of acceptance and bringing the best in class checkout experience to our merchants.
Q. What are your expectations related to eBay expansion in Caucasus taking into account PayPal development in Georgia?
A. I can’t really comment on ebay expansion plan in the region, as you may know it has been announced that ebay and PayPal will separate into two independent publicly traded company in 2015. However with the launch of PayPal receive functionalities in Georgia, local sellers can definitively expand their business globally by leveraging of global marketplaces such as ebay.
Q. How many claims are made by Georgian users so far? Tell us about trends at PayPal resolution center and claims?
A. We haven’t noticed any Georgia specific tends on this topic. We see Georgian consumers enjoying the buyer protection offered by PayPal when they shop online in case the item they order is not delivered or not as described. Users have 180 days after their purchase to open a claim.
Discussion about this post