Pacific Epoch editor Shang Koo confirmed that Shanghai-based online payment solutions company 99Bill will be Baidu Inc.'s payments partner for its bid ranking advertisements and movie search. Pacific Epoch wrote about the story first on MarketWatch after Koo spoke with 99Bill founder and CEO Oliver Kwan on Friday.

PayPal and Alipay have an obvious advantage over 99Bill and other independent payment solution providers: their parent companies eBay and Alibaba have tens of millions of registered users in China. PayPal looks like it has been able to shrug off its parent, signing up Tom Online and Netease ahead of its China launch. The Baidu partnership is a coup for 99Bill because it will push thousands of small enterprises onto the 99Bill platform - and for those of you with doubts about whether the 99Bill solution works, Pacific Epoch editors and analysts have played around with it and it works fine.

Read more about China's payments environment and ecommerce in China's eCommerce Industry report.