Above: Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific for Paypal, Rupert Keeley, poses for a picture with Paypal's triangle-shaped smartphone payment dongle in Hong Kong on March 16, 2012. Online financial transactions titan PayPal began letting merchants worldwide take payments using smartphones through the usage of a triangle-shaped "dongle" card reader that plugs into mobile devices to let people make purchases.

HONG KONG - PayPal Asia-Pacific chief Rupert Keeley said on Friday the US company plans to expand in the region over the next 12 to 18 months, after it launched the region's first payments service for smartphones.

Australia and Hong Kong were the first countries in the region to have the new mobile system but Keeley said it would soon be available in other markets including mainland China, where the licensing process was under way.

'We're delighted to be the first in Asia Pacific to offer this innovative mobile solution,' he said, noting that Asia had a US$1.3 trillion small-medium business retail market combined with rapid uptake of smart phones.

'PayPal is going to change the way millions of merchants and consumers connect with each other in the Asia-Pacific region,' he said.

The online financial transactions company's region headquarters is in Singapore but it serves many of its customers in the vast region remotely through a network of six sales offices, he said.

Mr Keeley said PayPal was 'looking to expand our footprint in Asia' with the opening of new offices in several countries, including India.

The company currently has six sales offices in the region, covering Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore and Sydney. It has development centres in India and Singapore and customer support centres in China and Malaysia.

Mr Keeley said Indonesia was another attractive market, but would not confirm if the archipelago of 240 million people was on PayPal's list for expansion.