The third-party payment platform Alipay has launched a digital payment certificate to help prevent users' accounts and passwords from being stolen.

Alipay will issue this certificate to all users free of charge.

Alipay says this is the first free digital payment certificate ever launched in China. It can help users identify the identification of the person who is doing the transaction with them, and if a user's account and password were decoded, they can not be used without the user's digital certificate.

Latest CNNIC surveys show that China has 79.143 million online shoppers, but less than three million routinely use online payments.