Chinese lifestyle service platform 58.com and Internet payment provider Alipay.com announced their strategic cooperation that aims to provide better used and secondhand goods trading services to Chinese Internet users.
With the cooperation, 58.com will introduce Alipay's online guaranteed trading application. When purchasing lifestyle services on 58.com, users can complete the payment after receiving satisfactory services. Alipay's guaranteed trading service will first be applied to the used goods trading and gradually extend to rent deposit guarantee and used car trading guarantee. In the future, the service will also be available on the mobile platform of 58.com.
When making deals via this new service, Alipay will temporarily escrow the payment for buyers and inform the sellers to ship the goods. After buyers confirm the delivery, Alipay will unfreeze the payments and send to sellers. If the buyers are not satisfied with the goods, they can apply for refunds, and Alipay will return the payments to them.
Yao Jinbo, chief executive officer of 58.com, said the introduction of Alipay's guaranteed trading model aims to solve the trust issues in used goods trading. This move is expected to prevent false information and payment security issues for Chinese classified information websites and provide more convenient and secure trading supports to users.