UC Mobile Corp. has entered China’s mobile-payments market in partnership with Alipay, the country’s largest independent online-payment platform based on transaction volume, the company announced April 21.
UC Mobile, the world's largest mobile Internet browser provider based on installations, released a version of its browser that supports Alipay’s payment plug-in and payments via mobile phones.
The newest version is available for the Google Inc.’s Android and Symbian Foundation’s Symbian operating systems, and UC will offer versions that support Apple Inc.’s iPhones, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 7 and Research in Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry devices in the second half of the year, according to a UC Mobile press release.
The new version of the browser will support direct access to Alipay’s payment pages for making transactions via mobile phones, a spokesperson for UC Mobile tells PaymentsSource. Previously, users were unable to use Alipay’s payment service to make purchases if they were using a mobile browser to shop. At best, they could use the Alipay app to make transfers, buy airtime or pay bills.
With this partnership, when users shopping on a website using the UC Mobile browser will be redirected to an Alipay payment page to make and authorize the transaction. “The version will also allow users to pay amounts under 200 yuan (US$30 or 20 euros) without a password,” the spokesperson adds.
Alipay is an online-payment subsidiary of Hangzhou-based Alibaba Group. It became one of the world’s largest online-payment providers in November when it reached a daily transaction volume worth 2 billion yuan.
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