European Luxury Brands, Online Retailers Increasing Cooperation With Paypal, Alipay, With Benefits For Chinese Consumers
Forzieri is one of the latest European brands to allow direct payment from Chinese shoppers
Over the past few years, as Chinese consumers have embraced e-commerce, online retailers specializing in European luxury goods have become wildly popular with shoppers looking to sidestep China’s heavy luxury taxes. These independent online shops — often run by Chinese overseas students in their spare time — by and large are hosted on Taobao, China’s hugely successful answer to eBay, and process payment through Alipay, Taobao’s answer to Paypal. Recently, however, Paypal linked up with China UnionPay in an effort to compete with Alipay — which claims 3/4 of China’s online payment market — offering Paypal accounts that allow customers to shop on overseas websites.
While this might be bad news for Alipay, the ever-intensifying fight for market share is great news for Chinese consumers, who now have an increasing number of options for online shopping. As a People’s Daily article this week points out, as online payment companies continue to duke it out and offer more incentives, Chinese shoppers can now avoid dealing with currency exchange and do more direct online shopping from individual global luxury brands or shopping portals.
From the article (translation by Jing Daily team):