Reuters
阿里巴巴位于浙江杭州郊区的总部。照片拍摄于2014年4月23日。
当
刘琳琳（音）需要现金为北京一套新公寓付首付时，她并没有去银行取钱，而是求助于阿里巴巴(Alibaba)。 这位28岁的杂志编辑使用的是一个名为支付宝钱包(Alipay Wallet)的智能手机应用。通过支付宝钱包，刘琳琳可以从一个网上储蓄帐户中提取人民币5万元（约合8,130美元）。该应用令她避免了去传统银行网点申请转帐的麻烦。这些银行网点的服务之差是出了名的。 刘琳琳说，我不用在银行网点排上几个小时的队，就可以转帐或支付帐单，所有事情现在都可以通过手机在一分钟内搞定。 
时间轴：阿里巴巴崛起之路
阿里巴巴集团(Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.)周二申请赴美国进行首次公开募股(IPO)。这宗交易有可能成为史上规模最大的IPO。该公司最出名的业务是主导中国电子商务市场的多个网站，而中国的互联网用户数又排名全球第一。 掌握阿里巴巴业务核心、或其成长命门的是它的姊妹公司浙江阿里巴巴电子商务有限公司(Zhejiang Alibaba E-Commerce Ltd.)。该公司常常因其最著名的业务而被称为支付宝。该公司并不归属于阿里巴巴，预计也不会成为此次IPO的实体组成。但中国的公司文件显示，该公司由阿里巴巴高层管理人士控制。 上周《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)报道称，阿里巴巴正在与投资者洽谈收回支付宝部分股权一事。阿里巴巴是2011年将支付宝从主要业务中剥离出去的。据熟悉洽谈情况的知情人士称，虽然阿里巴巴IPO之前不大可能采取这一行动，但这可能会提高投资者对IPO的兴趣，并缓解有关阿里巴巴管理层利益冲突的忧虑。 支付宝运营着一个类似贝宝(PayPal)的网络支付服务，已经是全球第一大移动支付公司。虽然阿里巴巴没有在周二的IPO文件中透露支付宝的财务细节，但文件列出的一些数字显示，支付宝在某些方面已经超过了阿里巴巴。 文件显示，支付宝2013年处理了5,190亿美元的支付交易。阿里巴巴电子商务网站的支付总额仅占支付宝处理的支付总额的37.6%，这意味着，超过一半的支付宝交易服务是为阿里巴巴以外的网站或交易平台提供的。5,190亿美元这个数字是阿里巴巴网站销售总额2,480亿美元的两倍多，表明这家网络支付服务公司对其他的中国电商公司是多么重要，很多中国电商都使用广受欢迎的支付宝。 目前，支付宝通过智能手机推出了新的服务，旨在与中国商业银行争夺投资者在投资、储蓄和日常支出的控制权。这些移动服务吸引了监管部门的关注，也受到了实力强大的国有银行的反对。 这些服务中许多是通过一个智能手机应用即支付宝钱包来进行的。通过该应用，用户可以存取款、支付水费、给家庭成员转账，甚至可以在聚餐时实行AA制付款。 广州市民马小南（音译）称，人们在购买饮料时无需使用硬币或者找零，他使用支付宝钱包在广州地铁站的试点机器上购买打折的碳酸饮料。每种饮料的价格暂时都低于20美分，以鼓励消费者购买。消费者的智能手机发出一种声波，自动售货机接收后发回信号，从他的支付宝账户扣款。 马小南表示，人们需要做的就是打开支付宝钱包并付款，整个过程一分钟就能完成。 支付宝已不仅仅是阿里巴巴推出的一个电子商务服务产品。虽然该公司2013年处理了370亿美元通过移动终端进行的电子商务交易，但它早些时候曾表示支付宝处理的移动支付超过1,500亿美元。这其中很大一部分金额可能来自人们用智能手机相互转账，或将资金从支付宝的投资基金转入转出。 相比之下，eBay Inc.旗下在线支付服务贝宝(PayPal)去年处理的移动支付金额为270亿美元。 就传统业务而言，支付宝会就每一笔交易收取商家和电子商务网站的费用。在淘宝上开了一家配饰网店的Molly Zheng说，顾客用信用卡每支付一笔交易，她都要向支付宝交纳1%的费用。信用卡交易占其网店总交易量的30%至40%左右。 她说，自己刚开店时并不支持信用卡支付，因为费用太高，但后来需求不断增加，便决定使用信用卡支付服务，向支付宝交纳这笔费用。 对支付宝来说，下一步是利用其在电子商务领域的重要地位发展成为中国客户的储蓄银行和电子钱包。据下载量追踪机构iResearch统计，支付宝钱包已被下载超过1亿次。 九个月前，支付宝推出了货币市场基金余额宝，吸引了870亿美元存款，其中大多来自追求收益率高于中资银行存款利率的年轻人。这些存款被投到一只货币市场基金中。晨星(Morningstar)数据显示，该基金在目前全球同类基金中规模排名第四。存款人向管理这只基金的天弘基金管理有限公司(Tianhong Asset Management)支付一小笔费用。天弘基金公司是余额宝的合作方。 这令支付宝突然卷入与中国大型国有银行的竞争之中，后者向监管部门施压，要求其遏制支付宝在金融领域的野心。中国央行日前表示，互联网公司经营的投资基金必须接受更多监管，其中包括未明确的"资本约束"。 支付宝对此不予置评。 支付宝还在支付领域进行了创新。支付宝钱包能够令用户在某些实体店购物。29岁的会计师Maggie Sun说，她最近利用支付宝钱包的手机扫码支付功能在百货商店购买了一条人民币300元的牛仔裤。 Maggie Sun说： 是朋友告诉我这种新的支付方式。不过实话说，我并不认为这比信用卡支付方便多少。她还担心用支付宝转账的安全性。 Paul Mozur （本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
When Liu Linlin needed cash for a down payment on a new apartment in Beijing, she didn't turn to a bank. She turned to Alibaba.
The 28-year-old magazine editor tapped a smartphone app called Alipay Wallet, which let her access 50,000 yuan ($8,130) from an online savings account. The app let her avoid applying for a transfer at one of China's traditional bank branches, which are notorious for poor service.
'I don't need to line up at bank outlets for hours to get my funds transferred or to pay my bills,' Ms. Liu said. 'Everything now can be done on your mobile phone in a minute.'
On Tuesday, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. that could be the largest in history. The company is best known for its websites that dominate e-commerce in China, home of the world's largest Internet audience.
Central to Alibaba's operation and possibly the key to its growth is corporate cousin Zhejiang Alibaba E-Commerce Ltd. The company--often called Alipay for its best-known business--isn't owned by Alibaba, and isn't expected to be part of the IPO. But it is controlled by Alibaba's top executives, according to corporate filings in China.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Alibaba was in talks with investors to reclaim a stake in Alipay, which it split off from its main business in 2011. While such a move isn't likely before the IPO, according to people with knowledge of the talks, it could drum up investor interest in the offering and soothe concerns about a conflict of interest for Alibaba's management.
Alipay runs a PayPal-like Internet-payment service that is already the world's No. 1 processor of mobile payments. Although Alibaba didn't disclose detailed financials for Alipay in a filing for its initial public offering Tuesday, it laid out numbers that show that Alipay has in some ways already outgrown Alibaba.
According to the filing, Alipay processed $519 billion of payments in 2013. Payments for Alibaba's e-commerce sites represented only 37.6% of the total, meaning more than half of Alipay's transactions are for sites or exchanges outside Alibaba. The $519 billion figure is also more than double the $248 billion in goods sold on Alibaba's sites, showing just how critically important the online-payment service is for other Chinese e-commerce businesses, many of which use Alipay because of its popularity.
Now, Alipay is launching new services via smartphones aimed at wresting control of investments, savings and everyday spending from China's banks. These kinds of mobile services have drawn scrutiny from regulators and opposition from powerful state-controlled lenders.
Many of those services operate on a single smartphone application--Alipay Wallet. With the smartphone app, users can add to and tap their savings, pay water bills, transfer money to family members and even go Dutch at dinner with a feature that helps them split the check.
'You don't need to get coins or change to buy drinks,' said Ma Xiaonan, a resident of the southern city of Guangzhou, who uses Alipay Wallet to buy discounted sodas in a trial program at the city's subway stops. For now, each soda is priced at less than 20 cents to encourage people to participate. The buyer's smartphone emits a sound wave that is picked up by the vending machine which, in turn, sends back signals deducting the charge from his Alipay account.
'All you need is to open your Wallet and launch the payment, and it will be done in a minute,' said Mr. Ma.
Alipay has grown beyond Alibaba's e-commerce offerings. Though Alibaba processed $37 billion in mobile e-commerce transactions in 2013, the company earlier said Alipay processed more than $150 billion in mobile payments. Much of that amount is likely accounted for by people sending each other money over smartphones, or putting money in and out of Alipay's investment fund.
By comparison, eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments service processed $27 billion in mobile payments last year.
In its traditional business, Alipay charges vendors and e-commerce sites fees for each transaction. Molly Zheng, owner of an accessories shop on Alibaba's Taobao e-commerce site, says she pays a 1% fee to Alipay for every transaction paid by credit card--about 30% to 40% of her transactions.
'My shop didn't support credit-card payment when I first started because the fee is too high for a startup,' she said. 'But with increasing demand, I decided to use it and pay the fee to Alipay.'
The next step for Alipay is to take advantage of its prominence in e-commerce to become the saving bank and wallet of Chinese customers. Alipay Wallet has been downloaded more than 100 million times, according to download tracking firm iResearch.
Nine months ago, Alipay introduced money-market savings accounts known as Yu'E Bao, or Leftover Treasure, which have attracted $87 billion in deposits, mostly from young people seeking returns that are higher than China's low bank interest rates. The deposits are pooled into a money-market fund that is now the fourth-largest such fund in the world, according to Morningstar. Depositors pay a small fee to the fund's manager, Tianhong Asset Management, which Alipay has offered to buy.
The accounts have thrust Alibaba's online-payment affiliate into competition with big, state-owned Chinese banks, which are pressuring regulators to rein in the upstart's financial ambitions. China's central bank said recently that investment funds run by Internet companies needed more supervision, including unspecified 'capital constraints.'
Alipay declined to comment.
Alipay is also branching out on the payments side. Alipay Wallet includes a function that lets users buy goods at some brick-and-mortar stores. Maggie Sun, a 29-year-old accountant, said she recently used Alipay to buy a 300-yuan pair of jeans from a department store through a code scannable by her smartphone's camera.
'My friend told me this new way of payment. But I didn't see this as being much more convenient than using credit card, to be frank,' said Ms. Sun, who also worried about the security of transferring funds that way.
Paul Mozur
