All pay for Alipay

Chinatechnews.com reports that, having seen off eBay into the arms of Uncle Li's Tom Group, the boys in Hangzhou will start charging users of their Alipay service from 2nd April. The post notes "Gong Meng, public relations manager at Alipay, has told local media that they will mainly charge fees from the external users of Taobao.com and Alibaba, but those users who have registered with both websites don't have to pay any fee". The fees, it says, will be no more than 1.5%.

Jack Ma previously scoffed at eBay's suggestion that free was not a business model. They had some trouble last summer launching a paid element into Taobao.com itself. But, with numbers climbing steadily at Alipay and some 300,000 businesses using it, it seems that the time has now come to turn a good idea into good money.