PayPal has opened its new global operations centre on November 1, in Malaysia. The first in Southeast Asia, its role is to provide service and support in English to customers across Asia. The center also provides an additional risk and financial services operations for PayPal’s global business by working together with the regional headquarter in Singapore and their operation centre in Shanghai. Meanwhile, there is a plan to have additional Asian language support in the near future and hire 500 more local staff as their employees by the end of 2013 to join their 10,000 global workforce.

The facility, located at 1 First Avenue, Dataran Bandar Utama, is the eighth operation centre after Berlin, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Dublin, and Chandler and Omaha in the U.S. Based on a Wall Street Journal report, PayPal had more than 6.5 million active accounts in Asia. At the end of last year, cross-border payment volume in the Asia-Pacific region was up by 35%.

PayPal Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific, Rupert Keeley, mentioned in a recent interview, that the reasons for choosing Malaysia was because of the accommodative policies, availability of multi-lingual workers, fast development of e-commerce and technologies in the country.

“People are the most important asset and we are making a significant investment here in terms of hiring local talent, and providing them extensive training to better serve our customers around the world,” John McCabe, PayPal Senior Vice President of Global Operations, commented on the Paypal’s plan on hiring 500 additional local employees.

As part of the grand opening ceremony, Keeley, McCabe and other PayPal team members were joined by the Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry, Datuk Mukhriz Bin Tun Dr. Mahathir. Dr. Mukhriz said to the press “The government is always looking to enhance and simplify trade for businesses in Malaysia, especially for small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs), and global market players like eBay and a payment system like PayPal’s basically facilitate trade. I urge local businesses and SMEs to quickly adopt a multi-channel retail strategy, by exploring new growth and expansion approaches including utilisation of new technologies.”

If you are interested in joining PayPal, you can apply online for positions at http://www.ebaycareers.com/home.html