Alipay reports 150 million users in February and integrates into Apple’s browser

The largest Chinese online payment system Alipay reported a mark of 150 million users it achieved by the end of February 2009 which means an addition of 50 million of new subscribers within the period of six months since it last reported a milestone of 100 million at the end of August 2008.

The report shows that as of February 28, 2009 Alipay, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group LLC, was handling up to 4 million transactions per day with a peak daily transaction volume exceeding RMB700 million, up 100% and 55%, respectively, over the last six months. The average transaction amount per user increased 32.5% year-on-year.

Last year Alipay registered 57 million new users, a double growth as compared with 2007. Later within the first two months of 2009 the payment system added 20 million more users to its customer base. Most of Alipay’s 150 million subscribers are individual customers while 460,000 are businesses or online merchants. 83% of Alipay users are aged 21 to 35, a group which has relatively higher spending power than other age brackets.

Additionally, in a separate report Alipay announced that its payment service can now be accessed from Apple’s Safari Internet browser. This integration will allow millions of Safari users in mainland China to use Alipay as their online payment option. Thus Alipay is now the only mainland Chinese online payment provider which supports different Internet browsers including Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome.