To help resolve one of the key bottlenecks of e-commerce – payments in China – Alibaba established Alipay (sort of PayPal system)an escrow payment system in an alliance with four major Chinese banks China Merchant Bank, China Construcion Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and the Industrial and Commerical Bank of China. What is interesting is that Alibaba has managed to get their banking partners to waive most inter-bank fees to support it. Alipay had already by June 2005 3.4 mn registered users, most of them coming from Taobao, and the transaction volume in June reached $17million. It is the intention of Alibaba to introduce Alipay to most of its trading members by the end of 2005. Smells like trouble for Ebay…(via Lehman Brothers).
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