BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group plans to spend at least $200 million on acquisitions and other investments in the next few years. The Hangzhou-based company, in which Yahoo Inc. has a 39% stake, has already invested $73 million to date in 10 companies, said Wei Zhang, who is heading Alibaba’s strategic investment unit, in an interview Tuesday. The company has committed an additional $200 million to $300 million to the unit over the next two to three years, she said. The investment plan is another example of Alibaba’s willingness to spend despite the slowing global economy. The company has also committed $30 million to marketing one of its Web sites, and plans to expand its work force by more than 40% to 17,000, even as other companies have had to cut staff to save on costs.
By LORETTA CHAO

China’s Alibaba.com Ltd, the world’s largest online B2B marketplace, plans to team up with HSBC Holdings plc and Citibank A.S. as it aims to turn its Alipay unit into an international online payment platform, sources reported. The company will allow account holders of the two global lenders to pay and transfer funds online via Alipay platform. It is also reported earlier that the Hangzhou-based company plans to cooperate with MasterCard Incorporated and Visa Inc to launch an internationalized Alipay settlement platform. David Wei, CEO of Alibaba, said that Alipay will be the platform in Alibaba’s B2B international settlement in the third quarter of this year.
On b2bmarket.wordpress.com

Hi all! It’s JB Coutinho, marketing manager for PayPal’s Send Money application within Yahoo! Mail. Starting today, we have a Send and a Request Money application directly within Yahoo! Mail - making sending or asking for money easy and painless. Here’s how it works. If you have a PayPal account, you click on the PayPal icon on the Yahoo! Mail sidebar. You can either send or request money. To request money, all you need to know is the e-mail address of the person you want to ask, insert the amount and include a brief description. The form is then automatically inserted into a Yahoo! Mail e-mail and you just press send. That’s it!
On thepaypalblog.com

HONG KONG -Indian exporters can apply to join Alibaba.com Ltd.’s top membership level from July 1, the Chinese online business-to-business platform operator said Monday.Becoming a member of its Gold Supplier International Edition will maximize Indian companies’ exposure to overseas buyers, Alibaba.com said in a statement, adding the number of Indian members on its online platforms has surpassed 1 million.Alibaba.com said Indian small and medium-sized enterprises now account for 12% of all registered users on its international marketplace, making it the second-largest international market after the U.S.
On online.wsj.com

After eBay said in April that it planned to spin off its Skype business, some investors and analysts started wondering about the e-commerce company’s other major subsidiary: What about PayPal? In the past two weeks, a number of sources have said they have heard talk that eBay is exploring different options for realizing more value from the lucrative payments business. One source said he had heard the company was considering selling PayPal to a consortium of private equity investors while keeping an equity stake. Another heard a rumor that eBay would issue a tracking stock for PayPal.
By Douglas MacMillan

In a bid to help sellers kick off more merchandise sales, eBay Inc. today launched a pricing structure that lets sellers run five auction listings without insertion fees every 30 days. “EBay is the fastest and safest way to showcase your items to millions of potential shoppers worldwide with just a few clicks,” says Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay Marketplaces. “By eliminating the upfront costs of selling on eBay, we hope this new structure will encourage all sellers–new, occasional or experienced–to use the offering as a cost-effective way to sell on our site and earn a little extra cash.”
On internetretailer.com

NEW YORK — Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, a presumed candidate for governor of California, is working on a book about the “core values” that helped her build the online commerce giant. The book, currently untitled, is scheduled to be published by Crown Business in February, just as California starts voting for its next governor. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Whitman will donate all of her earnings to charity. “Whitman will interweave personal stories and leadership lessons culled from her tenure at eBay and other companies,” according to a statement issued late last month by Crown, an imprint of Random House Inc.
On denverpost.com

The first buyer of his laptop used a hacked account, the second tried to trick him into sending it without payment. When security expert Bruce Schneier tried to sell a used laptop on eBay, he thought it would be easy. Instead, a sale was aborted twice — first by a scammer using a hacked eBay account and then by a buyer who tried to trick Schneier into sending her the laptop after she cancelled payment. Schneier, the chief security technology officer at BT, is an authority on cryptography and frequently speaks and writes on security-related issues.
By Sumner Lemon

eBay is closing down Reseller Marketplace effective June 30, 2009, after announcing in the spring that it was targeting the secondary markets business. eBay launched the B2B liquidation marketplace in 2005 as part of a strategic alliance with Global Sources Ltd. to help PowerSellers source inventory from China. The launch was seen as a competitive move against Alibaba, whose TaoBao C2C auction site was fiercely competing with eBay in China at the time.
By Ina Steiner

Jun 22, 2009 - eBay, Inc. has announced the recipients of the 2009 Star Developer Awards, recognizing a variety of solutions that have helped foster the growth of an evolving community of buyers and sellers on eBay. From a Customer Relationship Management program that enables sellers to increase Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) to analytical tools for sellers that provide insight on its products’ current market value, these applications were developed from an increasingly dynamic eBay ecosystem.
On tradingmarkets.com