23 Facts About Alipay

Alipay 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 2013 Alipay launched a financial product platform called Yu'ebao.

In 2020, Alipay upgraded from a payment financial instrument to an open platform for digital life.

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In 2021, the mandate by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to open up the "walled garden" ecosystems of the major tech companies has led to the introduction of interoperability of payment QR codes of Alipay and competing WeChat Pay and UnionPay's Cloud QuickPass platforms.

The Alipay app provides features such as credit card bill payments, bank account managements, P2P transfer, prepay mobile phone top-up, bus and train ticket purchases, food orders, vehicles for hire, insurance selections and a digital identification document storage.

Alipay allows online check-out on most Chinese-based websites such as Taobao and Tmall.

Alipay app allows users to add their own services provided from different companies to create a more personalised experience.

Since late-2008, Alipay has promoted public service payment services and has covered more than 300 cities nationwide, supporting more than 1,200 partner organizations.

On 15 January 2009, Alipay launched a credit card repayment service, supporting 39 domestic bank-issued credit cards.

In November 2019, Alipay introduced Tourpass, a service component that allows non-Chinese users to use its mobile payment feature by pre-loading Chinese Yuan equivalent foreign currency into the app.

In 2020, Alipay used a QR code system to help in containing the COVID-19 outbreak.

Alipay was introduced to the Philippines in 2018 by Asia United Bank.

Alipay was introduced in South Korea in 2015, and is available at various merchants around the country.

Alipay entered Vietnam in 2010, with its network up to 21,000.

In 2017, Alipay partnered with SnapPay to allow Canadian retailers to accept Chinese currency from Chinese shoppers.

Alipay partnered with UniCredit, SIA and Banca Sella Group to enable app payments in physical and online stores in Italy.

Alipay partnered with Barclaycard in United Kingdom, bringing Alipay to UK retailers.

Alipay is conceptually similar to Apple Pay, WeChat Pay and PayPal because it overlays traditional card payment methods.

In November 2021, Alipay introduced a new privacy protection feature amid growing concerns over data privacy and after China's Personal Information Protection Law came into effect on 1 November 2021.

Alipay's new feature allows users to track how the app collects data about them and is an interactive equivalent to a privacy policy, which explains how an app collects, stores, and shares user data.

Alipay was banned in India on 2 September 2020 by the government amid the 2020 China-India skirmish.