Alipay (Alibaba Group) To Grab a Slice of the China’s Travel Bookings

Posted by Joachim Bartels | Nov 7, 2013 | Alibaba, Alipay, China, E-Commerce, Payment Services, Uncategorized | 0 |

Alipay, the online payments unit of Alibaba, is teaming up with world airlines to let its 800 million account holders purchase flights without a credit card.

The company’s deal with UATP (Universal Air Travel Plan), a private network run by airlines like Air New Zealand, Delta, Aero Mexico, Qantas, and Japan Airlines, is designed to capture a slice of the China’s rapidly expanding travel sector, currently worth some 622 billion yuan (US$102 billion).

Jingming Li, Chief Technology Officer for AliPay, told Quartz that Alibaba launched the partnership because they, “had noticed a great trend of our members traveling to popular destinations like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris.”

Source: Quartz.com

BIIA Comment: This means that Alibaba is taking note of customer behavior as it starts mine the wealth of transaction data flowing through its e-commerce systems.

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Joachim Bartels

Joachim C Bartels is a co-founder, director, head of information resources and Editor-in-Chief of BIIA. In his capacity as Editor-in-Chief he is responsible for the selection of relevant information content concerning industry insights, trends, technological developments, standards and policies impacting BIIA members in particular and the business information industry in general.

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