Ogone-owned online payment gateway service provider E-Billing Solutions (EBS) has partnered with the online payment provider PayPal, to become its first channel partner in the country.

What Does the Partnership Entail? While the financial details of the partnership were undisclosed, EBS claims that this partnership will allow over 5,000 online merchants using EBS payment platform, to add PayPal as a payment option to their EBS merchant account and sell goods to 113 million active PayPal accounts in 190 markets across the world. The company claims to offer more than 70 payment options to merchants including the popular ones like Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Net Banking, Mobile payments and Cash Cards.

As per the partnership, EBS has implemented a single sign-on mechanism for their merchants to access both their EBS and PayPal accounts, while PayPal’s express checkout has now been integrated to EBS, providing merchants a single payment solution to accept online and mobile payments in about 25 different currencies, without any separate integration or compliance needed from the merchant side. There is no word on whether the partnership works on a revenue sharing basis or any other basis.

Accept Payments From Day One: EBS claims that through this initiative, merchants can start accepting foreign currency payments right from day one, instead of the usual 30-day waiting period provided by other online payment systems and up to 90-day waiting period in the regular goods export model.

Mayur Patel, India Country Manager, PayPal Southeast Asia and India also claimed that online merchants who have integrated PayPal as their payment provider globally, have experienced an 18% increase in sales and 23% increased customer conversion ratio over credit cards.

It will be interesting to see if this initiative will enhance PayPal’s presence in the country. PayPal is currently available in the Indian market for international remittances and payments, although its service is currently crippled due to RBI guidelines on export related remittances, which does not allow users to receive more than $3000 per transaction, and automatically transfers the amount to the user’s bank account on a daily basis.

Earlier in the year, it was reported that PayPal was looking to apply for a domestic payment license in India and set up an Indian office next year. A fortnight later, eBay Inc which owns PayPal, had stated its plans to open a Global Development Center in Bangalore, which will focus on Paypal and eBay Marketplace and hire technologists for both the companies. However, it was not clear if PayPal plans to launch a consumer product in form of a semi-closed wallet to compete with services like Airtel Money, Itz Cash, Done Card, Oxigen and Beam or tie-up with Banks to launch a money transfer service, competing with NPCI’s mobile money transfer platform IMPS, which recently extended the service to merchant payments, and similar products from companies like ZaakPay, PayMate, Beam and mChek.

Related:

– Digital Payment Gateway Co EBS Acquired By Ogone

– Updated: NPCI Extends Interbank Mobile Payments Service To Merchants

– RBI Reiterates Stand On Not Allowing Mobile Wallets To Offer Cash-Withdrawals