December 15, 2006
Alipay slammed a Chinese newspaper report that accuses the online payment company of being a tool for money laundering.
"We can't say for sure that this report was deliberately manipulated to attack us, but we do think it has many problems," Gong Meng, a public relations executive with Alipay, said yesterday. "They didn't contact us before they published the report."
A Beijing Morning Post report Wednesday said Alipay has become a convenient tool for criminal activity.
The report said the online payment service allowed two people to collaborate to get a cash advance using a credit card by setting up a false transaction. As an example, the report said one person would offer a product for sale, while another pays using a credit card, and then the first person returns the received money back to the person who used the credit card.
This kind of cash advance is illegal, according to credit card regulations published by People's Bank of China, the country's central bank.
Alipay countered that its risk control department has always been dedicated to fighting illegal cash advances and other such activities, and had already discovered many criminal groups that tried to get cash advance.
The report also said Alipay could also make it easier to launder money because transactions through Alipay were not supervised by banks and hard to trace. It furthered that the large amount of money lying dormant in Alipay accounts could provide a large cash supply for the company's personal investments.
Alipay responded that it always carried out rigid identity recognition of its users, asking for either identity information or bank account information. Alipay cited China Merchants Bank to show that their efforts were supported and praised by many banks.
In regard to the dormant money, Alipay noted it was the first third-party payment platform in China to invite a bank to supervise its operation. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) said in document in November that it found no proof that Alipay users' deposits had been used improperly
http://www.interfax.cn/displayarticle.asp?aid=19875&slug=INTERNET
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