Amazon.cn has announced plans to formally cooperate with Alipay, an online payment provider and sister company of Amazon.cn's competitor Taobao.com, which is owned by Alibaba.com.

From now on, users can use Alipay's payment tool to do online shopping on Amazon.cn. Alipay and Taobao.com are two core businesses of Alibaba, and Alipay has played an important role in Taobao's fast growth. Alibaba seems to want to create Alipay into an independent third-party Internet payment platform, which should have more vitality than a closed payment platform.

The cooperation enables Amazon.cn to provide an additional payment method for its users. Before this cooperation, Amazon provided such payment means as cash on delivery, credit card payment, debit card payment, postal payment and bank transfer. Taobao says that Amazon's cooperation with Alipay won't affect Taobao's B2C business as there is almost no competition between Taobao and traditional B2C companies.

At present, Amazon.com is testing the Alipay functions. It is expected that the function will be formally released after the test is done in July.