Alipay, or Zhifubao in Chinese, is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in Hangzhou, China in February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company Ant Financial remains Hangzhou-based.
Alipay overtook PayPal as the world's largest mobile payment platform in 2013. In the fourth quarter of 2016, Alipay had a 54% share of China's US$5.5 trillion mobile payment market, by far the largest in the world, although its share fell from 71% in 2015 as its rival Tencent's WeChat Pay was rapidly catching up. As of September 2017, Alipay unveiled a facial recognition payment service.
Video Alipay
Operations
Alipay claims it operates with more than 65 financial institutions including Visa and MasterCard to provide payment services for Taobao and Tmall as well as more than 460,000 Chinese businesses. Internationally, more than 300 worldwide merchants use Alipay to sell directly to consumers in China. It currently supports transactions in 18 major foreign currencies.
The PBOC, China's central bank, issued licensing regulations in June 2010 for third-party payment providers. It also issued separate guidelines for foreign-funded payment institutions. Because of this, Alipay, which accounts for half of China's non-bank online payment market, was restructured as a domestic company controlled by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma in order to facilitate the regulatory approval for the license. The 2010 transfer of Alipay's ownership was controversial, with media reports in 2011 that Yahoo! and Softbank (Alibaba Group's controlling shareholders) were not informed of the sale for nominal value. Chinese business publications Century Weekly criticised Ma, who stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors was aware of the transaction. The incident was criticised in foreign and Chinese media as harming foreign trust in making Chinese investments. The ownership dispute was resolved by Alibaba Group, Yahoo!, and Softbank in July 2011.
In 2013 Alipay launched a financial product platform called Yu'ebao (???). As of June 2013 the company still had what it called "a minor paperwork problem" with the China Securities Regulatory Commission, but the company said that they planned to expand the product while these are sorted out.
In 2015, Alipay's parent company was re-branded as Ant Financial Services Group.
In 2017, Ant Financial Services Group introduces their expansion of service to Hong Kong, named as "Alipay HK". Providing features such as mobile payment, settled and paid with Hong Kong dollar instead of Renminbi.
Maps Alipay
Security
Alipay provides multiple security mechanisms to make sure that user accounts are safe. An Alipay account requires the user to set up their own login password and separate payment password, which need to be different. The user can enter the login password up to five times and the payment password up to three times before the user is locked out of his or her account. To regain access to the account, the user must contact Alipay. They also install a digital certificate, which can encrypt information sent over a network, preventing hackers from stealing passwords, thereby enhancing the security of online transactions.
References
External links
- Official website (in Chinese)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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