This week, John Muller with the eBay Inc. Government Relations team, participated in the 2nd Annual Asia Pacific Financial Forum in Seattle, Washington. The symposium featured discussions between financial services experts from public sector institutions, business, standard setting bodies, multilateral organizations, academia and other relevant stakeholders in an effort to deepen understanding of significant policy and regulatory issues and their impact on financial markets.
eBay Inc. participated on the panel on Financing the Growth of Small Business: Improving Lending Infrastructure and Promoting Trade and Supply Chain Finance. Other panelists included Thomas Clark with GE Capital, Boon-Hiong Chan with Deutsche Bank and Dr. Michael Turner with PERC. This session focused on issues impacting availability and cost of international and domestic trade finance across value chain of enterprises, especially small, medium, and micro-sized enterprises.
Muller discussed how technology is providing a global platform for business of all sizes from the individual entrepreneur to the largest businesses to take their business to a global audience. This is a revolutionary phenomenon providing access to billions of the world's consumers instantly. Technology-enabled businesses across the Asia-Pacific region are more likely to export, export to more countries, and survive longer than their offline counterparts. And now that small businesses can reach consumers around the world, they need capital to secure inventory to meet the demand. At PayPal, our working capital program uses a simple and clear pricing structure, loans are available for a single fixed fee that is displayed to the small business up front.
Although technology can assist many small businesses achieve success, there are still challenges to an integrated market for cross border commerce by small businesses. Muller encouraged policymakers to revisit and review classical regulatory structures, both in terms of goals and in terms of execution. He explained the goals remain sound, but the current process-based models are antiquated and are not doing a great job. Muller said that eBay Inc. believes that regulation is a field primed for advancement. The key is to embrace technology, utilize a risk-based approach, and to apply 21st Century data-analysis models to improve regulation.
For more information on eBay Inc. position on these issues, please visit the eBay Inc. Policy Lab.