PayPal Appoints Ping An Fintech Star Hannah Qiu as Head of Chinese Operations

PayPal, the first overseas online payments company to gain access to the Chinese market, has announced the appointment of former Ping An and OneConnect executive Hannah Qiu (邱寒) as the head of its China operations.

PayPal announced on 17 August that it had appointed Qiu to the positions of senior vice-president and chief executive of the China region.

The US online payments giant said that in the newly created position of China chief executive Qiu will be fully responsible for formulating PayPal’s long-term growth strategy in China, as well as the implementation of executive plans.

Qiu will report directly to Jonathan Auerbach, who is Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy, Development and Data Officer at PayPal.

Qiu has extensive experience in the Chinese fintech sector, having first joined Ping An Group in April 2014, where she served first as general manager of its tech data platform and subsequently as general manager of credit agency Qianhai Credit (前海征信).

Qiu led the establishment of Qianhai Credit’s personal credit services operations, helping to make it one of the biggest credit agencies in China.

In September 2016 Qiu was appointed Chief Innovations Office and deputy-general manager at Ping An’s fintech vehicle OneConnect, eventually rising to the position of joint general manager. Qiu departed from OneConnect in July 2020.

During her time with OneConnect she helped to drive its cross-border growth to become a bank, asset manager and insurer covering both China and other countries in Asia.

Qiu has also previously worked at GE, McKinsey and Singapore’s Temasek.

In Oc­to­ber 2019 the Peo­ple’s Bank of China (PBOC) gave its ap­proval to Pay­Pal’s ac­qui­si­tion of a 70% eq­uity stake in Chi­nese pay­ments com­pany Go­Pay (国付宝), mak­ing the US pay­ments gi­ant the first for­eign-in­vested com­pany to gain ac­cess to the do­mes­tic sec­tor. 

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