More services to pay offline for Taobao items

Chinese customers unable to make their payments online for the items purchased with Taobao.com will be provided more offline retail kiosks to complement over 4,000 locations already opened by Taobao.com in Beijing in such supermarkets and convenience stores as Vanguard, Lianhua and Hi-24. By the end of the following year the company is determined to open even more payment points to allow those shoppers with restricted access to Internet to pay for the purchases by means of convenient offline services.

Previously shoppers who made their purchases through the Internet on Taobao.com had to make their payments via online banks or Alipay, a subsidiary of Alibaba.. As a result many Chinese consumers with no access to the Internet payment options were unable to participate in ecommerce. As of today there are approximately 240 million Internet subscribers in China with the population of above 1.3 billion.

The initiative of Taobao.com is aimed at consumers who cannot complete their payments through the Internet. Through supermarkets and convenience stores such as Vanguard, Lianhua and Hi-24 they will be able to pay by cash after selecting products from Taobao.com's online stores. By the moment the company opened 15,000 offline payment points including those 4,000 in Beijing alone. Taobao.com is planning to implement 100,000 offline retail kiosks by the end of 2009.