Sina, UnionPay Team For Chinese Internet Payments

Just as the hectic Chinese Lunar New Year holiday shopping and travel season peaks, two of China's business titans have joined forces to make online shopping faster and easier.

China UnionPay, Sina.com, and Sina's payment subsidiary jointly announced that the three parties have reached a deal to further improve Internet payment services by integrating their products, customers, and channels.

The cooperation will reportedly cover various sectors such as payment products, value-added services, and marketing and promotion. In addition, after obtaining the payment license issued by the People's Bank of China, Sina's payment service formally joined China UnionPay's network. Sina Weibo users who hold UnionPay cards will be able to enjoy the Internet and mobile payment services directly via CUP.

Prior to this deal, Sina Weibo and the company's reading and video channels had already joined the online payment service of CUP. With this new agreement, they two parties further improved their online payment cooperating range and depth.

The cooperation with UnionPay will help Sina compensate for its insufficient payment ability and improve its overall online payment strength as it battles Alibaba. For UnionPay, it will help enlarge its influence in the online payment sector.

The financial terms of the deal were not reported by either party.