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Figure 4.1 Alipay vs PayPal. Illustrated by Aspen Wang.

Alipay’s understanding of trust was firmly rooted in the company’s DNA. Not content with solving the problem of online payments, it wanted to go fur- ther to minimise the risks for customers. In February 2015, Alipay launched a campaign under the slogan: “If anything goes wrong with your transaction, we pay ( 你敢付，我敢赔 )”. This meant that any customer that suffered a loss to online fraud while using Alipay would be compensated in full. (Figure 4.1) An Alipay account – beyond payment When Alipay first launched, the payment settlement was fulfilled by the finance department of Taobao, using Excel to record the transactions. The buyer transferred money to Alipay’s corporate account at ICBC (the Indus- trial and Commercial Bank of China) then, once they confirmed receipt of the goods, Alipay transferred the funds from its ICBC corporate account to the seller’s bank account. Initially, there were few payments to process.