Alipay to Charge P2P Transaction Fee
Sina Tech, 11/18/13
Chinese third-party payment processor Alipay announced today that, beginning on December 3, the company will eliminate free money transfer services between Alipay users for transactions below RMB 20,000. Whereas transactions of RMB 20,000 and over were previously charged a 0.5% transaction fee, all Alipay P2P transactions will now be charged at a 0.1% rate, with a minimum fee of RMB 0.5 and a maximum fee of RMB 10. Services subject to the fee include account transfers, received funds, and rent payments. User transfers made via Alipay's "Alipay Wallet" mobile app continue to be free of charge and without transaction amount limits.
Alipay functionality was not completely free of charge prior to the most recent change, with Alipay users divided into gold accounts, authenticated users, and non-authenticated users. For gold account users, account transfers of over RMB 20,000 initiated via PC were subject to a service fee of 0.5% of the excess amount. Non-authenticated users had a monthly free account transfer limit of RMB 1,000; when this amount was exceeded, each additional transfer was subject to an RMB 1 transaction fee, capped at RMB 25 per month.
Editor's Note: For more background on this topic, please see "'Alipay Wallet' App User Base Exceeds 100 Mln" MD 11/13/13 issue.
Keywords: Internet Alipay third-party payment online payment business model policy
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