China Daily reports that Alibaba has expanded its online payment partnership with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (http://digbig.com/4hsrc). Alibaba and its Taobao subsidiary compete with eBay's online auction service in China.
According to the newspaper, Alibaba's online payment service, called Alipay, now has over 17 million clients, with a daily trading volume exceeding 30 million yuan (US$3.75 million). The report said from January to April, Alipay dealt 6.29 million transactions with a total trading value of 1.12 billion yuan (US$140 million), quoting Alibaba CEO Jack Ma saying the transactions in the four months almost equaled the total transactions in 2005.
