Alipay or 支付宝 in Chinese is a third-party cell phone and online payment platform. It is established in Hangzhou, China in February 2004 with the aid of Alibaba Group and the founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved their headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai but their parent enterprise Ant Financial stays in Hangzhou-based.

Alipay overtook PayPal as the world’s greatest payment platform in 2013. As 31 March 2018, the number of Alipay customers reached 870 million and it still growing. It is the number one worldwide cellular charge service agency and the second largest payment provider company in the world. According to the research on the fourth quarter of 2018, Alipay has obtain 55.32% share of the third-party price market in China and it still continues to grow.

Alipay stated that they have operate with more than 65 financial partner which is including Visa and MasterCard to provide payment services for Taobao, Tmall and more than 460,000 online and local businesses in China. How Alipay work? Alipay is used in the smartphone with the Alipay Wallet app. The QR code will be use as payment codes for local in store payments. Besides that, the Alipay Wallet app also provides features such as credit card payment, bank transfer, prepaid mobile phone top-up, purchase bus or train ticket, food order, vehicle for hire and mostly China based online e-commerce such as Taobao. This app also allows users to add their own services provided from a lot companies to create a more personalized experience.

Alipay has promoted public service payment services and has covers more than 300 cities nationwide. There are supporting more than 1,200 partner organizations. Example of the partners are payment utility such as water and electricity. Besides that, they have extended their services like paying transportation fines, property fee and cable television fee too. Common online payment services also include hydro-power coal payment, tuition payment and traffic fine.

Besides that, Alipay launched the credit card repayment service and it can support for 39 domestic bank issued credit cards. It is currently the most popular third-party repayment platform. The main advantages of using this service are free credit card bills checking, repayments with no administrative fee charge as well as automatic repayment, repayment reminders and other value-added services. In the first quarter of 2014, 76% of credit cards repayments were also paid by Alipay Wallet.

Several chain convenience store companies including Meiyijia, Hongqi Chain, Qishiduo C-STORE and 7-Eleven, have successively supported Alipay payment. Moreover, Beijing taxi drivers began to accept Alipay to pay the fare. Wanda Cinema, Joy City, Wangfujing and other large-scale retail companies as well as cinema, KTV, and catering companies have access to Alipay. It has become super convenient for them as with 1 e-wallet they can do a lot of things.

Alipay has introduced Tourpass, a service component that allows non-Chinese users to use the mobile payment feature by pre-loading Chinese Yuan equivalent foreign currency into the app. As it has helped a lot foreigner that visit China to enjoy same convenient like residents at China.

During Covid-19 outbreak, Alipay used QR code system to help a lot the outbreak. The health code system tags users one of three color according to their location, basic health information and travel history.

This payment method has expanded to a lot different country outside from China like Asia, Europe countries and a lot more so more people can enjoy the convenient that bring by this e-wallet and can help to boost up tourism industry as tourist from China can use Alipay whenever they go.