Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten is increasing its focus on China after it announced a partnership with Alipay, the Alibaba-affiliated payment platform, to make it easier for shoppers in China to buy goods from its global site.
Rakuten Global Market, the international branch of Rakuten’s domestic Ichiba marketplace service, has now added Alipay to its payment options. Parent firm Alibaba is China’s dominant online retail firm, but Rakuten’s service offers access to goods from retailers in Japan and other countries.
Right now, 10,000 of the 42,000 ‘shops’ listed on Rakuten Ichiba sell goods internationally. An initial 250 will support payment via Alipay, but Rakuten plans to increase that over time in response to the “rapid” growth that it is seeing in China.
Alipay is working to expand its presence into services outside of China, and it inked a number of overseas partnerships in January.
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