Alipay is an escrow service that protects your payments when buying online. Already the largest third-party payment platform in China with more than 200 million users, Alipay is being trialed for the first time on Alibaba.com’s international marketplace as the payment solution for AliExpress Beta 1.0. With Alipay, your payment is only released to the seller after you confirm that you are completely satisfied with the order you receive. Pay securely using your credit card or without exposing your details. Alipay, part of the Alibaba Group of companies, provides an easy, safe and secure payment solution for online transactions.
Learn more about Alipay.Along with the pre-launch of the AliExpress, a mini help channel is also unwrapped to give users a better understanding of how to complete the buying cycle.
AliExpress is a brand new wholesale trading site owned by Alibaba.com (HKSE1688). A select group of small and medium-quantity buyers are invited to participate in the wholesales platform. Buyers and suppliers are encouraged to post opinions about the pre-release site in the hope that its user interface can be more polished. It comes out as a beta site early this month.
Aliuser would suggest users going through the less-than-5-min AliExpress’s quick tour first, which walks through the whole process in a simple form
Concerns can be triggered by the following items but the help channel has already offered some useful tips:
You can send feedback to the platform operators
现在买家在AliExpress产品详细展示页面看到的产品运费，默认是以卖家最小起订量作为运算初始值，同时根据买家IP判断买家所在国家和地区（默 认为美国）而计算出来的。例如，如果卖家设置的产品最小起定量为1，买家IP地址对应的地理位置是美国。那么，买家在AliExpress产品详细展示页 面，默认看到的就是1件产品寄到美国所需要的产品运费。买家可以根据实际需要，方便地选择购买数量和收货地区，点击“calculate”按钮，即可清楚 地知道相应的产品运费的实际金额。
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AliExpress is a brand new wholesale trading site owned by
"AliExpress is an example of a large public-listed company fearlessly diversifying into unfamiliar waters," said Rose Li, Chinavasion.com Public Relations Spokesperson. "As the first website to offer direct-from-China wholesale, Chinavasion.com would like to wish Alibaba the best of luck in their new startup."
Chinavasion was the first company, in 2005, to offer wholesale electronics sent from warehouse stock in China to international buyers.
Alibaba's main website enables Chinese sellers to advertise to buyers, boasting 8.6 million registered users, but the AliExpress website is a fresh launch in the style of a dot-com startup.
The new AliExpress website is found on the main Alibaba.com domain, but represents a major departure from Alibaba's core business, according to Chinavasion's Rose Li:
"The main Alibaba.com is essentially an advertising website: no deals are transacted. AliExpress is different. It's ecommerce with international shipping, and that's 100% new business territory for the Alibaba group."
Chinavasion's Rose Li drew a clear distinction between the AliExpress service and Chinavasion:
"Chinavasion is a true wholesaler. Products advertised on Chinavasion.com are all real products in our warehouse stock. Products advertised on AliExpress, on the other hand, are from thousands of different small Chinese suppliers and are not guaranteed to be in stock."
Chinavasion regularly publishes statistics demonstrating its exceptional ship-out speeds and quality standards. Chinavasion is always quick to emphasize the importance of speed and quality control for meeting buyer's requirements, areas where smaller China sellers will commonly fall short.
The AliExpress site explains that Alibaba will guarantee order fulfillment under an escrow arrangement. This will be the first international test of Alibaba's proprietary AliPay online payments system, already widely recognized within Mainland China as a payment method for the Alibaba group's eBay-style auction website Taobao, and a would-be competitor to eBay's Paypal system.
What is unclear, commentators point out, is whether Alibaba will take a leaf out of Paypal and EBay's book and provide strong buyer guarantees. Chinavasion's Rose Li commented:
"Will buyers get what they want from AliExpress? Each supplier you find in AliExpress will have their own concepts of acceptable quality and speed. Since the goods are neither sold nor shipped by Alibaba themselves, the burden will still fall to the buyer to investigate and test each and every different supplier in the system before trusting them with orders."
Chinavasion's Rose Li said her company was happy to act as a yardstick buyers could use for comparison with the prices and services they might find on AliExpress.
"We would like to offer our site Chinavasion.com as a price comparison for people shopping online through AliExpress. We are confident we offer a more user-friendly experience without the need to worry about quality, speed, or trust of unknown Chinese suppliers."
Alibaba.com has started on its plans for world domination global expansion on Monday, quietly launching AliExpress - Alibaba’s first entry into the world of ecommerce portals.
While we will talk about buying on Alibaba and how to spot the scammers let’s just take a look at the background behind Alibaba.com.
Alibaba is perhaps one of the biggest web entities based in China. Alibaba brought in US$440 million revenue last year and claims to have 32 million users on Alibaba.cn and 8.2 million users on Alibaba.com.
However, it’s global users that bring in the money, US$84 million in the last quarter, 63% of its earnings.
This perhaps is the reason that the company has started to look offshore a little more for its money.
So far it has pumped US$30 million into international advertising and another US$200 million into global acquisitions.
And while Alibaba is seen as China’s biggest B2B portal it is really an advertising space, no deals actually go on within Alibaba it is all done outside via email or on smaller vendor’s websites.
This is where AliExpress comes in.
In AliExpress, Alibaba holds the payment for the customer in its Escrow Alipay system and only pays the supplier once the item has been delivered.
You can read more of this story here: prweb.com/releases/China-Wholesale/AliExpress/prweb2769864.htm
This is aimed more at the small to medium retailers sourcing from Alibaba.com who may have been scared off by the chance of not receiving their merchandise.
Further evidence of this is in the $10,000 per order credit limit placed on buyers.
So, essentially, AliExpress is the development of a fully working ecommerce website set up on the same domain the main business of advertising takes place.
According to our PR guru, Rose Li, it’s a move that takes a lot of courage:
“AliExpress is an example of a large public-listed company fearlessly diversifying into unfamiliar waters,” said Rose Li.
So while Alibaba’s investors watch on in baited breath what opportunities does this open up for small ecommerce operators and eBay resellers?
While some may look on this development as a great new sourcing opportunity the reality may not be so rosy.
It is true that the use of the Escrow-based Alipay system to manage payments between suppliers and customers may prevent the non delivery of goods — a big concern of smaller customers — but there are problems that it won’t solve.
These problems are likely to include:
This is largely because vendors will still be dealing with the same suppliers they have had problems with in the past. It’s just that the suppliers wont be getting the money until something is in the customers’ hands.
“Will buyers get what they want from AliExpress? Each supplier you find in AliExpress will have their own concepts of acceptable quality and speed. Since the goods are neither sold nor shipped by Alibaba themselves, the burden will still fall to the buyer,” said Rose Li.
“Alibaba will need to provide AliExpress buyers with strong buyer guarantees.”
So with that in mind any potential buyers will have to go into AliExpress with both eyes open and examine any potential vendors carefully.
Dropshippers should be extra vigilant.
These are the top 5 warning signs you should be wary of when examining their site and sending a test email.
If you go to the seller’s profile page and they have a wide range of products on offer then there is a good chance that you’re dealing with a trading company and won’t get the best deals.
If they don’t answer your questions when you haven’t bought anything imagine how bad it’s going to be when you’ve bought something and are actually trying to solve a problem.
While it would be incorrect to say that suppliers from that region are all crooks and thieves it is safe to say that many people who have tried to source from there have come away with a bad taste in their mouths.
Chinese companies almost always have a city attached to them and so ones that don’t have one in the title should be treated with a great deal of caution.
EG
Even if a location is in the name you still aren’t in the clear. Check their:
If the same name doesn’t appear twice, walk away.
And, if after contacting them, somebody gets back to you with an email address like mrwang82882882888888 @168.cn, asking you to contact him on his personal mobile or msn… Run.
The only way you are going to get brand name products is if you pay brand name prices and go through a few select channels.
It is very unlikely that a small player on AliExpress is likely to have the Apple iPhone or Nintendo Wii you need.
And if they are blatantly ignoring copyright even their non-counterfeit products must be called into question.
Even if warning lights don’t go up over those five things it is still worth going online to review sites and wholesale forums and seeing if anybody has dealt with them in the past before.
So is the launch of AliExpress an opportunity an exciting development in ecommerce in China?
You bet
Is it a fantastic new development that is going to open access to the world of China manufacturing to small and medium sized ecommerce operators?
Quite possibly not. But if you’re going to take the plunge keep both eyes open when you jump.
