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. As of 31 March 2018, the number of Alipay users reached 870 million. It is the world's number one mobile payment service organization and the second largest payment service organization in the world.
According to the statistics of the fourth quarter of 2018, Alipay has a 55.32% share of the third-party payment market in mainland China, and it continues to grow.
The service was first launched in 2003, by Taobao. 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 online and local Chinese businesses.
Alipay is used in smartphones with their Alipay Wallet app. QR code payment codes are used for local in-store payments.
The Alipay app also provides features such as credit card bills payment, bank account managements, P2P transfer, prepay mobile phone top-up, bus and train ticket purchase, food order, vehicle for hire, insurance selection, digital identification document storage. Alipay also allows online check-out on most Chinese-based websites such as Taobao and Tmall.
According to en.wikipedia
