Alipay began in 2004 as a payment tool for Taobao, the e-commerce site Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group launched while fighting eBay for the Chinese market. Without widespread credit card protections, buyers did not trust strangers online, so Alipay held each payment in escrow until the buyer confirmed receipt, a step that helped Taobao outcompete eBay in China. When the People’s Bank of China issued payment licensing rules around 2010 with stricter terms for foreign-funded firms, Ma moved Alipay out of Alibaba, which was partly owned by Yahoo and SoftBank, into a domestic company under his control. A 2011 settlement gave Alibaba royalties and a payout capped at $6 billion if Alipay went public.

In 2013 Alipay launched Yu’e Bao, or leftover treasure, a money market fund for idle balances that by mid-2016 had 152 million users and $117 billion. The parent became Ant Financial Services Group in 2015, and Alipay grew into a super app for bills, transit, meals and ride-hailing, past 1.3 billion users and over 55 percent of China’s mobile payments by 2020. Regulators then required an anti-monopoly review above 50 percent share, routed clearing through the state-overseen NetsUnion, forced Ant in 2021 to separate its Huabei and Jiebei lending businesses, and made its QR codes work with WeChat Pay and UnionPay.

• A 2019 face-scanning payment feature applied a beauty filter to the customer’s image on screen.
• During COVID-19 in 2020, Alipay assigned red, yellow or green health codes that controlled entry to places like grocery stores.
• Partnerships reached First Data’s four million US merchants, 3,000 Walgreens stores, Seoul taxis and Air Canada bookings.
• Ant took stakes in bKash in Bangladesh, GCash in the Philippines and 2C2P in Singapore, and launched Tour Pass for foreign visitors in 2019.
• India banned the app in 2020 amid border skirmishes, and China’s Personal Information Protection Law led to new data-tracking features.