Online Retailer Nixes Internet Payment Partnership In China

China's online retail world is facing a fractured partnership as a leading shopping site ends an agreement with a top payment site.

Chinese B2C e-commerce website 360buy.com has published a notice, stating that its cooperation with Alipay.com, the Internet payment subsidiary of Alibaba Group, expired on August 24, 2011, and the company will now stop the use of payment services at Alipay.com.

According to 360buy.com, the reason for its termination of the cooperation with Alipay.com is because the service fees charged by the latter are too high, which are reportedly four times higher than 99bill.com, another Chinese Internet payment service provider.

360buy.com said that from now on users will not be able to login to 360buy.com or pay for the orders with their Alipay accounts. If they used Alipay accounts for entering 360buy.com before and want to use the balance and credits of previous accounts, they can submit applications by providing related email addresses.

In regards to 360buy.com's decision, Alipay.com said that they respect and understand the business decision made by 360buy.com. However, they reportedly feel sorry for their users who will not be able to complete payments with Alipay.com on 360buy.com.