| Alipay is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in (Hangzhou, China) on 1st of February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to (Pudong, Shanghai) although the parent organization 'Ant Financial' remains in (Hangzhou-based).
The service was first launched in 2003, by Taobao. The PBOC, China's central bank, issued licensing guidelines in June 2010 for third-party payment suppliers. It likewise gave separate rules for foreign-funded payment institutions. Because of this, Alipay, which accounted for half of China's non-bank online payment market was rebuilt as a domestic organization controlled by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma to encourage the administrative endorsement 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 investors) were not informed regarding the sales for nominal value. Chinese business distributions Century Weekly condemned Jack Ma, who expressed that Alibaba's group board of directors knew about the transaction. The incident was criticised in foreign and Chinese media as harming foreign trust in making Chinese investments. The ownership dispute was settled by Alibaba Group, Yahoo!, and Softbank in July 2011.
Alipay overtook PayPal as the world's largest mobile payment platform in 2013. As of 31 March 2018, the number of Alipay users arrived at 870 million. It is the world's number one mobile payment service association and the second largest payment administration organization on the planet. As indicated by 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 keeps on growing.
In 2013 Alipay launched a financial product platform called "Yu'ebao". As of June 2013 the organization actually had what it called "a minor paperwork issue" with the China Securities Regulatory Commission, yet the organization said that they wanted to extend the product while things are figured out. In 2015, Alipay's parent organization was re-branded as Ant Financial Services Group. In 2017, Alipay unveiled their facial recognition payment service. In 2020, Alipay upgraded from a payment financial instrument to an open platform for digital lifestyle.
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