Alibaba's online payment service Alipay announced key metrics for 2006, claiming that it was the year online payments reached critical mass in China. Alipay announced that as of December 31, 2006, the number of registered AliPay users surpassed 33 million. Alipay's daily transaction volume reached US$12.8 million (RMB100 million), and the number of daily transactions using Alipay reached 460,000.

In 2006, Alipay further extended its reach to merchants outside of the Alibaba and Taobao marketplaces, with more than 300,000 external merchants using Alipay as their preferred online payment platform, including leading local brands Lenovo, CCTV, Aigo, and New Oriental.

Jonathan Lu, President of Alipay, said, "Alibaba's ecommerce community is built on trust and it is also an essential part of our online payment platform. Alipay's escrow based system has solved the problem of trust for Chinese ecommerce users and is the safest way to trade online in China."