It is now increasingly important to set up a credit system that conforms to e-commerce's characteristics in China, and can efficiently guarantee online credit for advancing enterprises' informationization and lowering the operation cost for enterprise websites.

In January 2008, Alipay, one of China's largest independent and third-party payment platform, has announced the launch of a seller credit program in cooperation with China Construction Bank. Alipay seller credit service is based on the credit of Taobao.com's users and their interactions with the Alipay service. CCB is the loan lending party, but all procedures of loan applications and returns will be done within a user's Alipay account. With this service, qualified sellers of Taobao.com will also get up to RMB100,000 individual small sum loans to solve their funding shortages. AliPay is a division of Alibaba.com and enables individuals and businesses to securely and conveniently send and receive payments online. AliPay is a service tailored to meet the local needs of China, building on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards, and utilizing proprietary fraud prevention systems to create a safe payment solution.

Source: CNNIC News posted on June 4th, 2008