Earlier this week, Alibaba.com launched a new business-to-business platform, and now, it looks like eBay and PayPal will get a boost from it, too.  It’s been decided that AliExpress will offer PayPal as a payment option.

This may turn out to be a significant moment for both sides.  Alibaba is a successful ecommerce platform based in Asia, with about 47 million registered users, but of course AliExpress is brand new.  And PayPal is a big moneymaker for eBay, with roughly 84 million active accounts in existence, but Asia isn’t its home market.

Together, then, it’s possible that they’ll achieve quite a lot.

David Wei, the CEO of Alibaba, even said in a statement, "Our work with companies such as PayPal is crucial, because we want to make sure we are meeting the needs of our customers by making payment as fast, safe and easy as possible."

PayPal’s also happy about the move – and looking forward to future developments – as Farhad Irani, Vice President of PayPal Asia Pacific, wrote in a blog post, "We’re very excited to have this fantastic new merchant join the PayPal franchise and I look forward to letting you know about other news out of Asia as it happens."