Alibaba Group's Internet shopping subsidiary Taobao.com has gained a third-party payment license for funds issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
This makes Taobao the first third-party e-commerce platform to provide services to fund sales organizations in the Chinese Internet industry.
At the same time, Alibaba announced that 17 funds have opened their online stores in the financial management channel on Taobao.com. Those fund stores provide various products, including money market funds, bond funds, stock funds, and hybrid funds, offering one-stop services for account openings, order placements, payments, and investment management.
Under the provisions of related Chinese supervision organizations, consumers who buy funds on Taobao.com must be above 18 years of age and complete a real-name registration on Alipay.com.
Yuan Leiming, general manager of the financial management business unit of small and micro financial services group at Taobao, said that on Taobao.com users only need to buy funds as products, and do not need to navigate the financial jargon or the complicated process on fund websites. In addition, by using big data, Taobao.com will be able to decide the risk appetite of users and realize one-click account opening and risk warnings to primary financial users.
Considering the risk factors, Taobao.com will limit investors' purchase amount of equity funds and the purchase limit of a single equity fund will be up to CNY2,000. Meanwhile, the purchases of money market funds and bond funds does not have such limits.