Chinese shoppers spent more on the Internet than at WalMart

While the whole continues to suffer the global financial crisis Chinese customers reveal increasing excitement in shopping online with foreign merchants. Since the introduction of online shopping channel in 2006 the commercial site Taobao reports a three digit increase in its transaction volume every year. Last month the average amount spent on the channel accounted for 10 million yuan which is about 4 times more than WalMart China's average daily intake in 2006.

Purchases made at American retailers and merchants rank fourth by volume but at the same time they rank first in amount spent per transaction. According to Zhang Yingxing, head of Alipay's overseas business department, American market is less explored than those of Europe and Asia. Yet Alipay is determined to expand to the American sector with a number of new U.S. merchants partnering with the Chinese counterpart of the online payment giant PayPal. Most of Alipay's American partner retailers are new and small, unlike other big Asian e-shopping sites, such as Japan's J-shoppers, which partners with big American companies

Rapid success experienced by Taobao suggested Alipay to launch a service enabling overseas retailers to sell products directly to mainland consumers in 2007. At present the average monthly amount spent on international products on Alipay is 8 million yuan. With customers increasingly using a third-party for payment transfer instead of paying by credit card online Alipay became the largest such domestic company dealing with international merchants.

Alipay has 250 partner retailers based in Hong Kong, East Asia, Japan, Europe and America, just 18 months after launching, supplying everything from cosmetics, clothing and jewelry to household appliances and digital gadgets. According to Zhao Xudong, CEO of the American retailer Yueyang (www.overseadeals.com), currently Alipay's major US partner, cosmetics, brand name clothing as well as nutrition products and the latest electronics are the most popular purchases. While today online shopping accounts for just 0.64% of all retail sales in China Taobao expects it to account for 5 to 8% by 2012. As of June the number of Internet users in China was 253 million.