But in Asia, PayPal’s not the only kid in the online payment neighborhood. In fact, over the years, numerous alternatives have sprung up in the region, sometimes even beating the payment giant in market share in their respective countries.

Furthermore, in emerging markets, ubiquitous Internet services are not always readily available, which means over-the-counter payment remains popular in those places.

So, if you’re an entrepreneur keen on regional or global expansion, understanding the market and the key players is an important first step. To help you, we’ve compiled this constantly-updated list to keep you abreast of the latest developments in Asia.

1) PayDollar

Launched in January 2012 by AsiaPay, a Internet and mobile payment services provider, PayDollar is a comprehensive debit payment option for the Asia-Pacific region. Merchants can use it to collect real-time payments from customers via bank accounts, debit cards, e-wallets, and prepaid products.

It can process payments from the following partners: China UnionPay, AliPay, 99Bill, PPS, MyClear, BancNet, Globe GCash, Smart Money, POLi, Bangkok Bank, Bank of Ayudhya, TMB Bank, United Overseas Bank, Siam Commercial Bank, and Krung Thai Bank accountholders.

The appeal of this service is that it can accept payments from a wide variety of online payment options, be it e-commerce, m-commerce, or direct bank transactions.

The service is available in Hong Kong, China, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Philippines.

2) Paysbuy

Paysbuy is a popular online payment option in Thailand. Founded in 2004, it allows members to send and receive money, as well as make payments via electronic devices. It also offers a variety of payment channels including credit cards, bank transfers, counter services, and e-wallets.

The company recently launched a mobile app for iPhone and Android, and has obtained an Electronic Money License from Thailand’s Ministry of Finance, and an Electronic Payment Service Provider License from the Ministry of ICT. They also have the Trustmark symbol from the Ministry of Commerce.

3) Alipay, Tenpay, Chinapay, 99bill

I grouped all of them together because they have one thing in common: They’re the four major online payment gateways in China in terms of marketshare.

According to an interactive graphic from Thomson-Reuters, Alipay is tops with 45.5 percent market share. It claims to have some 550 million users. Second is Tenpay, at 21.2 percent, followed by Chinapay and finally 99bill, which, despite coming in a distant fourth, has 107 million registered users (and the most original name).

PayPal is hardly a blip on the radar, although Chinese users do use it to purchase foreign goods.

Alipay allows companies outside of China to accept payments from within the country through its cross-border website and mobile payment services. However, foreign companies must pay a US$1,000 setup fee, and are charged a higher transaction fee. They also have an escrow payment service that allows shoppers to verify the quality of the goods they received before releasing the funds to the merchant.

Alipay can also be seen as PayPal greatest competitor. In fact, it claims to be bigger than PayPal in terms of transaction volume and registered users. Alipay has global ambitions as well: It plans to launch Alipay Express, it’s international online payment platform, very soon.

Tenpay and 99bill, on the other hand, can only be used by businesses registered in China. Also, 99bill lacks an escrow service, and also charges foreign companies more. Tenpay would be a great option if your business is reaching out to customers that use Tencent’s QQ services. QQ is the most popular instant messaging service in China, at 300 million users.

Considering the obvious bias towards China companies that the services have, foreign entrepreneurs who are serious about doing e-commerce in China should really consider registering in the country. For a more detailed guide on which payment services best suit your business, check out this handy article.

4) Swiff

Swiff, a Singapore-based company, does not seek to duplicate what PayPal does. Unlike PayPal, which is primarily an online payment gateway, Swiff is a mobile point-of-sales solution that enables merchants to accept payments simply by attaching a small credit card swiper to and installing an app on their smartphones.

What Swiff is competing with PayPal in, however, is the fight to win the future of cashless transactions in brick-and-mortar stores. It’s a battle that the likes of Google Wallet and US-based Square (started by Twitter creater Jack Dorsey) are involved in too.

Besides being a standalone product, Swiff also enables app developers to offer its solutions from their apps so that they can transact with users. The company has also worked with Raptor, a restaurant POS provider, to integrate their payment service into restaurant operations.

SGE previewed Swiff in October 2011, and since then, they are one step closer to launch. Their iOS and Android app is available for download on the App Store and Android Market. Merchants who want to use the app will need to register on the Swiff website.

The service is being made available in Singapore and Malaysia, although they plan to expand to Europe, the USA, Canada and South America.

5) MOLPoints

Think PayPal for games, and you have MOLPoints. But it’s more than that: MOLPoints is also an online currency and currency exchange system. A Malaysian product, MOLPoints is a system that enables customers to purchase online games, products, and services. It is available in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, India, Indonesia, and Thailand.

MOLPoints is essentially a niche product that services avid casual gamers who wouldn’t mind splurging on in-game items. Users pay real currency in exchange for MOLPoints, which can be used in over 200 games. With the MOLPoints Facebook app, gamers can even purchase Facebook Credits for use within the social network.

Last year, MOL Global, the company behind the system, purchased Zest Interactive, a leading games distributor and payment gateway company in Thailand. It owns a network of over 40,000 physical channels including retail outlets and cybercafes.

The acquisition should result in stronger usage of MOLPoints among Thai casual gamers.

Know of any alternatives that should be featured? Let us know in the comments section!

• Congratulations to Brian Wong (guest on TWIA Live Show from Open Web Asia KL) for obtaining investment money of $200K from Tru Ventures and possibly the youngest entrepreneur to be funded on his new start-up, Kiip.me (we are still checking this fact out).
• Week of Acquisitions in Asia goes on with Ingenico to buy SG’s Transfer.To after TenCube and Zynga to acquire Unoh: in Japan.
• The End of Friendster: MOL sold social networking patents to Facebook, recuperated their acquisition costs and then get the exclusive rights to Facebook Credits for Southeast Asia.
• Singapore’s Temasek holdings invested US$35M in Todou
• Malaysia launch Venture Investment Circle.

• Congratulations from the TWIA crew to our fellow co-host Mike Foong & his spouse with their 4th kid Myra Ines Foong – and is she the first child with her own hashtag #babym4 and have her name crowdsourced via twitter?
• Past Events: Open Web Asia & Google Dev Fest in KL – What an exciting week and we have a lot of feedback coming from our live show asking us for a video version. If you have any thoughts, please let us know. We also talked about the Google Dev Fest that followed after Open Web Asia in KL. Also, we reveal the next possible dates & venues for the next Open Web Asia Conferences: Taiwan & Indonesia next year.
• AntennnaGate from Apple & iPad sales furore in SG: So, we skipped this issue relatively quickly and talked about how iPad sales were so fast and furious that Smithy did not manage to get one for himself.
• The story about Bubble Motion: Interesting Asia start-up in Singapore and funded by Sequoia Capital (the same one who funded Google) which have made headway with Bubbly in India.
• Japan tech going regional? : With the launch of an interesting app, Sekai Camera from Japan with none of us installing it, we discussed how Japan has lately focused its efforts towards China & Korea while also being the first destination for US start-ups to launch in Asia.
• The MOL CEO, Ganesh Kumar Bangah and his blunder with his now famous comment on his rival’s OffGamers’ FB page, “Too bad for you, this is social media.“. If you do not know by now, MOL is the company who acquired Friendster and made a deal to distribute Facebook credits in Southeast Asia.
• Upcoming Events: Asian Blogger & Social Media Conference next week, Social Media World Forum Asia & Accelerate by E27 both happening on 22-23 Sep.

Show Notes on This Week in Asia:

• Samsung Developer Event in Zouk, Singapore: A short account on the event as Daniel and BL attended the event, and also there is an announcement on a competition or hackathon for development in March (We will put up more details once Samsung sends us the information).
• The Google Showdown with China: The press statement from Google on their decision to stop censorship on their search results and taking on the Chinese government to the extent that they might have to shut down their offices in China, sends out major ripples to the whole of Asia. We hear different views (George Godula – who is coming as a guest on our show in the coming week, BL and Tangos Chan) on the issue and the official response from the Chinese government (Source: BBC News).
• Yahoo! Southeast Asia and Friendster Partnership: The crew examine the impact of the Yahoo! Southeast Asia and Friendster partnership.
• Korea Authorities Slammed for ‘Myopic’ Approach to Wireless Banking Security: Gen Kanai and the TWIA crew discuss the adoption of the SEED protocol (a block cipher developed by the Korean Information Security Agency) and the consequence of monoculture in the Korean Internet space that does not support mobile banking on iPhones or in any browser other than Internet Explorer.
• East Asia Internet as a whole: The crew and Gen Kanai discuss about the trends and observations about the web-tech in East Asia and surprisingly, Google is not dominant in the East Asia markets. Additional References: Japan Mobile Social Networking Statistics
• The Future of Technology is: BL narrates the HP event “The Future Is” and talks about the “Blog a Trend” competition open for Singaporeans.

From This Week in Asia: (You can also listen to the podcast in SGE as well)

• The BlackBerry Bold 9700 Smartphone Event in Singapore: A short account on the Blackberry Apps World with local apps Foyage and Golden Village (for booking movies online) featured.
• Friendster Valued At Just $26.4 Million In Sale: Is Friendster worth really worth that much? Did MOL made a good buy?
• Mozat Raises Series A Funding From JAFCO Asia: We discuss the impact of mobile social networking for non smart phone devices and apps like Mozat and her competitors, Mig33 for emerging economies in Southeast Asia in the podcast.
• Australian Internet Censorship Given the Go Ahead – But What’s the Alternative?: The Australian Government have just finished their controversial Internet Filtering/Censorship trial, known as the “Cleanfeed”. Does that make Australia look like China?

• Some quick thoughts from the crew who attended the Nokia Christmas event in Singapore and Paypal event in Malaysia respectively tonight, and some thoughts after BL caught a glimpse of the Nokia N900 powered by the Maemo (powered by Linux).
• The Emergence of JooJoo: After the huff and puff from Mike Arrington on the end of CrunchPad, Fusion Garage has fought back with a video press conference and launched JooJoo, the new netbook on the block.
• The iMatch Conference 2009: We discussed some of the companies which made the pitch on the event: 2C2P, TenCube, HomeCamera, AiNET (Lunch Actually and Eteract).
• MOL acquired Friendster: The biggest story of the week – Malaysia’s MOL Global (check out which games they distribute here) will buy US social-networking service provider Friendster Inc. We discuss the implications, the strategic directions of this acquisition and what’s the impact for the consumers for the Southeast Asia online gaming market.

Editor’s Note: Note that BL disclosed that he has invested in Eteract under Thymos Capital.

Of course, the Widgeous Team started the ball rolling with their presentation of the platform. Throughout the day, the event is divided into various tracks. One of the tracks is totally focussed on the content management system, Drupal, where the developers led by Joeri Poesen started from the basics to the advanced, talking first about the platform and how to make use of Drupal to develop more interesting applications.

Another interesting discussion I have gone to is done by Wong Meng Weng (a successful Singaporean entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley). It is a discussion to use the analogy of wizards in fantasy role playing games and try to generate new ideas and insights about technology in the real world. One major lesson that I learned from this session is that the Internet has facilitated not just transactions without face to face, but also a platform to coordinate chaotic activity such that useful and organized output of information helped to create value for people and make their lives better. I thought that this type of ideas generation is sole lacking in our sessions back home, and urged Mohan to get Meng Weng for a session like this in the next E27 Unconference or related event.

The most interesting panel that I have attended is the session where the Malaysian entrepreneurs discussing going global where the issues and challenges they face are not so different from us in Singapore, and discuss about the entrepreneurs in terms of their mindset, and the execution risk as pointed by one of the panelists Vishen Lakhiani, co-founder of MindValley pointed out that the execution risk is a major issue among entrepreneurs in Malaysia. Dr V. Sivapalan, from Venture Partners Sdn Bhd, made this acute observation that there are actually enough talent to build four to five great companies in Malaysia, but the issue is that all the talent wanted to do something for themselves and hence you have 25 small start-ups where that combined strength can do 5 great start-ups. In some sense, it is also very reflective of young Singaporean entrepreneurs, where all of them do their own start-ups and not thinking of combining together to form a bigger start-up. The most interesting lesson is froom Ganesh, the CEO and President of MOL where he pointed out he has to modify the business models of his business to one that is of revenue generation. One thing that all of them agree is that ideas are cheap, and the execution is more important than idea.

For more updates on the event, please look at the Barcamp Malaysia Blog as the bloggers in Malaysia discuss and narrate what happened in the event.

Here are some pictures for the event:

Photo 1: The venue for Barcamp Malaysia

Photo 2: Daniel Cerventus and one of his teammate at the Registration Table

Photo 3: The session on Drupal by Ahmad Najib Habeb and Joeri Poesen

Photo 4: Meng Weng‘s interesting session about technology insights and ideas generation

Photo 5: Panel on “Entrepreneurs Going Global” – (From the left) Dr Sivapalan (Managing Principal of Ventura), Roslan Bakri (GM, MDEC, Technopreneurship Development Division), Ganesh Kumar Bangah (President, CEO of MOL AccessPortal Berhad) and Vishen Lakhiani (Co-founder, MindValley)

Photo 6: Preetam’s talk on interesting web 2.0 companies in Asia

Photo 7: The Singaporean speakers for Barcamp MY: Meng Weng, BL and Preetam Rai