South Korea’s Lotte.com Inks Internet Payment Deal With China’s Alipay

Chinese third-party Internet payment company Alipay revealed that the company has reached a deal with South Korean website Lotte.com to provide a RMB payment channel to Chinese users who shop on the website.

Furthermore, the products purchased on the website will be directly shipped from South Korea to China.

Lotte.com and the Lotte duty free store both belong to Lotte Group, one of the largest retail groups in South Korea. Prior to this, Alipay teamed with Lotte Group in providing convenient services to Chinese tourists who have a tight schedule in South Korea. With the services, those tourists can make online purchase from Lotte duty free store and pick up the goods offline in the store.

Alipay previously reached a cooperation deal with Japan's Rakuten on April 21, 2014, to provide Alipay online payment services on Rakuten's cross-border e-commerce platform, which allows users to pay in RMB. The Chinese Internet payment company also formed a partnership with Yahoo Japan to provide full Internet payment services from June 2014.

Alipay is accelerating its international business expansion. At present, its major method is to cooperate with overseas shopping websites, which makes Alipay one of the payment tools for those websites. With these moves, Alipay can meet the demands of Chinese users who want to purchase products overseas while penetrating into the overseas market.

Alipay is not part of the Alibaba Group, which plans to have an initial public offering in the United States soon. Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba Group, recently spun off Alipay into its own entity. This extraction of Alipay from Alibaba Group still causes consternation and concern for investors who see the separation as an overreach of the executive and fiduciary powers of the board at Alibaba Group.