Alipay upgrades its system for payment safety

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The popular Chinese online payment platform Alipay has upgraded its system to better help users get back mistakenly transferred funds and protect them against fraud.

The announcement was made by Alipay owner Ant Financial Group at the Cybersecurity Ecology Summit 2018 on Wednesday.

The Alibaba-backed Alipay's upgraded system help users get back funds that are mistakenly transferred to the wrong account or if they’ve sent an incorrect amount. Its Chinese rival, Tencent’s WeChat Wallet, already has measures to delay the transfer process to protect users.

Alipay's anti-fraud notice. /China Youth News Photo

Alipay’s new system also optimizes its anti-fraud mechanism, integrating it with law enforcement databases. For users who suspect that a transfer is fraudulent, they can choose to delay the payment and raise an alert on the platform, thereby freezing the transfer. The money will then be credited back to the user’s account if authorities determine that fraud has been committed.

Alipay can also flag a transfer that is deemed risky based on the recipient’s transaction history and other behaviors, and notify users to delay the transfer.

For now, the Chinese mobile payments market is dominated by Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alibaba-backed Alipay. Together, these two payments services have a combined market share of over 90 percent, according to consultancy firm Analysis.

Netizens and domestic media have long called for better security measures regarding online payments to protect the rights of users. Earlier this year, Xinhua reported that a man could not get his money back after transferring over 80,000 yuan to the wrong person via WeChat Wallet.