AliPay, the payment arm of Chinese Internet titan Alibaba, reached cooperation with Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to added AliPay as a payment option for purchases on Rakuten Global Market, the cross-border e-commerce unit of the Japnese company. The service is currently available in 250 stores on the platform and will be expanded to all the stores in the future.
Rakuten is the second Japanese e-commerce service that AliPay announced cooperation this month. Last week, AliPay announced it will be added as payment option on Yahoo! Shopping Japan.
Japan has become a popular marketplace for Chinese netizens who want to purchase products overseas, largely due to the depreciation of JPY. The total consumption of Chinese online shoppers in Japanese e-commerce sites surged more than 300% YOY in 2013.
As of the first quarter of this year, AliPay is available in more than 100 Japanese e-commerce sites and more than 1,000 platforms globally, according to data from the company.
Purchasing products or services from overseas markets has become a trend among domestic online shoppers in recent years. To tap the growing market, Alibaba also launched Tmall International, a site dedicated for business entities outside China, where overseas brands and merchants can sell their products directly to Chinese online shoppers.
Leave a comment