01-02-2007, 10:29 AM
Quote:Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce company, will soon start charging some users of its free Alipay online payments service as it seeks new sources of revenue.
Users of Alipay who are not doing business on Alibaba's Taobao auction site will have to pay "technical service fees" from the start of 2007, Alipay said in a brief statement seen on Sunday. Taobao customers will continue to use Alipay for free...
It did not reveal the size of the fees but Chinese Web-based media quoted businessmen affected by the change as saying a typical fee would be 1.5 percent of the total value of each purchase and Alipay would start levying the charges in February...
full article: http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinv...px?view=CN&storyID=2006-12-31T094038Z_01_SHA132575_RTRIDST_0_ALIBABA-PAYMENTS.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna