In cooperation with online game operator Tiancity.com, Alibaba's affiliate AliPay has marched into the B2C market of casual games.
With their cooperation, players are now able to purchase point cards from Tiancity.com through AliPay. Previous to this announcement, AliPay and Tiancity had cooperated on dealer payments and employee salary payments.
Statistics show that China's online game market reached CNY6.54 billion in 2006, which was an increase of 73.5% over that of the previous year. It is estimated that sales revenue from China's online game publication market will reach CNY24.43 billion by 2011.