MANILA - PayPal is launching new protection for its eBay sellers in the Philippines and the entire Asia-Pacific region that will guard against potential high-risk transactions and unauthorized payments,

In an e-mail interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com, PayPal South East Asia and India general manager Mario Shiliashki said the Asia Pacific is PayPal’s fastest growing region, with 12 million accounts as this year. He said Paypal processed more than $4 billion of total payment volume in Asia Pacific in 2008, an increase of 56 percent from 2007.

Shiliashki said the new protection system will guard Ebay sellers from potential scammers who make unauthorized Paypal payments using someone else's credit card, bank account or Paypal account.

"When this happens, PayPal places a hold on the funds until it determines if the funds are unauthorized. If the payment is unauthorized, the funds are returned to the legitimate buyer's account. As part of PayPal’s seller protection launch, eBay sellers are now protected against unauthorized payments when they provide shipping documentation," he said.

He said the new Paypal system also enables users to pay without disclosing their financial information with sellers or other third parties. He said PayPal sends an email confirmation of every account transaction. "If a user received confirmation of a transaction it doesn’t recognize, PayPal’s customer support team will help sort the situation.If a user believes an unauthorized payment has been sent from their account, the user can file an unauthorized claim through PayPal," he said.

Shiliashki said Paypal is ever vigilant against credit fraud by conducting 24/7 transaction monitoring, sophisticated anti-fraud risk models, a stringent verification process and an experienced team of over 2000 anti-fraud experts,. He said Paypal has maintained a loss rate of 0.32 percent in the first quarter of 2009 due to fraud.

He said the company also provides buyers and sellers with resources to educate themselves on ways to stay safe online, including educational materials on how to reduce fraud, tips to help protect their identities from fraudsters and ways to spot phishing e-mails.