The centre, along Neil Road, will serve the global market outside of the United States and Canada, while developing products and features for the company's payments service.

It will also customise products for different international markets, such as offering services in more languages and extending shipping services to more companies and countries.

Financial transactions made using the company's service will still go through PayPal's two processing centres in the US.

But chief technology officer Scott Thompson, who is based at PayPal's US headquarters in San Jose, did not rule out the possibility of locating one of the centres to Singapore to cater to Asian transactions.

PayPal located its international headquarters in the Republic to take advantage of opportunities in the fast-

growing Asian market, said Mr Thompson.

'We continue to invest behind that by having more people locally, who are focused on these markets, fully exploring the leads and supporting the customer base in the Asian markets,' he said.

He added that PayPal's international business will be bigger than its North American market by next year, and its non-eBay transactions will be worth more than those on the world's largest auction site.

Mr Thompson said Singapore's bank of skilled workers also counted heavily in PayPal's decision to make its base here.

'The talent pool is consistent with what we want in terms of capabilities and experience. People also want to come and live here from all over the world,' he said.

The firm wants international and local workers experienced in product development, operations and infrastructure design, engineering, and engineering support.

They would not just walk into a job, however. The hiring process begins with an engineering test taken over the Internet and then a further test where applicants must solve an engineering problem on a whiteboard in front of the company's best boffins.

And that is just to get to the interview stage.

There are more than 164 million PayPal accounts in the world from 190 markets. These transacted more than US$12 billion (S$17.4 billion) in the third quarter of this year.

The 17 currencies supported by PayPal include the Singapore and US dollars, Japanese yen and Czech koruna.