Speakers from eBay and PayPal were invited by Mal Brough MP, Federal Member for Fisher (located in Queensland) to keynote at the Future of Online Retail forum on the Sunshine Coast last week. 

Photo caption (Left to Right): Bruce Billson, Minister for Small Business; Local business owner Lloyd Borrett, The Scuba Doctor; Emma Hunt, Director, Small Business, PayPal; Russell Zimmerman, Executive Director, Australian Retailers Association; and Sassoon Grigorian, Director of Public Policy, eBay

This week, eBay Inc.’s Public Policy Lab participated in this year’s Annual RESER International Conference. Earlier this year, the Lab had submitted a trade research paper to RESER, the European Association for Research on Services, which was accepted. Hanne Melin represented eBay Inc. in Helsinki, Finland and presented the paper at the conference.

Tod Cohen, Vice President of eBay Inc. Global Relations, will be joining U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and other business leaders on a U.S. business delegation visit to Poland and Turkey later this month. The U.S. business delegation is part of President’s Export Council economic fact-finding mission to these countries. Last year, eBay Inc.’s CEO, John Donahoe, was appointed by President Obama to the President’s Export Council.

This week eBay Inc. released Commerce 3.0: Enabling Chinese Entrepreneurs, part of its global campaign to further grow Internet enabled trade for SMEs. The report, which was released in Beijing on September 10th by John Lin, Managing Director, eBay Greater China, revealed for the first time that eBay Mainland China commercial sellers lead the world in export destinations, reaching an average 63 countries.

eBay Inc. was honored to welcome His Royal Highness, Prince Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, to eBay Inc. headquarters. Accompanied by a Danish business delegation and eBay Inc. leadership, the Crown Prince spent time in the Commerce Innovation Showcase visualizing how eBay Inc. technologies are creating new experiences for consumers, enabling businesses of all sizes in Denmark and around the world compete and win. eBay Inc.

Hanne Melin, member of the eBay Inc. Public Policy Lab, along with Saemunder Finnbogason, a research student at Lund University in Sweden, published an article in the OECD Observer entitled "Technology Powered Trade: Energizing Sustainable Development in International Trade".

To underscore the importance of SMEs to the growth of the ASEAN region, eBay Inc., together with the broader US-ASEAN Business Alliance for Competitive SMEs (“Business Alliance”), sponsored a workshop for over 190 small business owners and entrepreneurs from the Metro Manila area. This is part of a series of capacity building programs that we are organizing with governments and industry associations in Southeast Asia to help ASEAN SMEs succeed in the Global Marketplace.

Leading representatives from industry, government and business recently attended a Payments Roundtable at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat in Singapore on July 29.

The roundtable, titled “Asia Pacific Payments and e-Commerce”, included discussion focusing on future of payments, as well as whether there should be payments harmonization. The roundtable was addressed by Dr Alan Bollard, Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat followed by a keynote address by Rohan Mahadevan, Vice President of PayPal Asia.