Chinese provider of a mobile payment system, who has experienced numerous expansions from a pure online payment system to become a dominant mobile payment system. Founded in 2004, Alipay meanwhile comprises a large user base of over one billion active users and over 80 million merchants, making it the largest mobile payment system worldwide. Since 2014, the service is part of the Chinese Ant Group, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group, which still holds a 30% stake in the company. Alipay features a mobile wallet and is used on e-commerce platforms (especially those of Alibaba such as Taobao and TMall) as well as for car sharing, food or mobility services. Payments are supported by credit card, direct debit or P2P. If this is done between Alipay users, no classical financial service provider is required. In addition, Alipay acts as an intermediary (intermediation) to providers of insurances as well as investment and credit products (microfinance), which consumers may use to finance the goods purchased via numerous platforms (ecommerce). In addition to the large user base, the procedure for assessing creditworthiness based on artificial intelligence (AI) and big data is considered a competitive advantage. A main competitor of Alipay is WeChat Pay of the Chinese Tencent Group.
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