On June 11, alipay.com (an affiliate of alibaba.com) and Paymate (a company based in Australia) jointly announced that haiwaibao.com, a Chinese online shopping platform, began its online service formally.

Supporting alipay as a valid paying tool, Paymate will place goods of Australian shops into the platform of haiwaibao.com, thus Chinese consumers can pick up these goods conveniently as they do from local shopping malls.

Industry insiders believe that alipay.com chose a smart time to hit Australian market. In this May, eBay announced in Australia that the company¡¯s customers in the country had to choose Paypal (a paying service provided by eBay) as payment tool. This action resulted in ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) carried out an anti-monopoly investigation against eBay. Under such circumstance, ailpay¡¯s appearance in Australia is not a good signal for eBay.

Till now, ailpay.com has signed cooperation agreement with over 200 foreign companies, covering areas include Japan, Singapore, America, New Zealand, South Korea, Europe, etc.