China’s central bank yesterday said it would allow non-financial companies such as Alibaba, the country’s leading e-commerce company, to offer online payment services.
The move comes after months of uncertainty over whether the People’s Bank of China might severely curtail the business of AliPay, an affiliate of Alibaba. The central bank has been pushing Chinese banks to set up a common online payment settlement platform themselves that would compete with AliPay.
China’s online payment services industry is expected to grow exponentially. The country has the world’s largest population of internet users at more than 400m, but the proportion shopping and paying online is much lower than in markets such as the US or Japan.
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