Alipay enhances mobile payment safety

Alipay, China's most popular online payment service, is to set up a fund to promote security and safeguard user information.

It will invest 40 million yuan ($6.5 million) in the fund and seek cooperation with other institutions, said Hu Xiaoming, chief risk officer with the microfinance services group of Alibaba.

"The mobile payment industry is still in its infancy, with comparatively low user sense of security", said Hu.

At the end of 2013, Alipay had nearly 300 million registered users, including over 100 million who access services via mobile phones.

Under the guidance with government authorities, the fund will focus on phishing, Trojans, money laundering, hostile attacks and user information, said Hu.

Alipay will cooperate with banks, e-commerce peers, security software companies in the joint fund. In 2013, Alipay blocked about 150,000 phishing websites, and assisted the police against 16 network gangs with more than 10 million yuan involved, resulting in 35 arrests.

Since March, the average daily transactions through Alipay have been about 25 million yuan.