Data sharing cut off as SF Express, Alibaba spat continues

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SF Express' market share dipped by over 3.54 percent on Friday to 52.07 yuan (7.24 US dollars) as the spat between the delivery group and Internet giant Alibaba continues. The share plunge has resulted in losses of around eight billion yuan (1.2 billion US dollars) in half a day.

The dispute, rattling both the e-commerce and courier service industries, can be traced back to a conflict over logistics data sharing between SF Express and Alibaba's Cainiao Guo Guo, which provides online merchants and customers logistics tracking data.

According to an announcement released by SF Express, for their own interests, Cainiao insisted that Hive Box, jointly-owned by SF Express and four other courier companies, provide clients' privacy included data to them. Since the data is not related to Cainiao and sticking to the "customer-first" principal, Hive Box declined the request. As a result, Cainiao disconnected Hive Box's data interface.

Alibaba Group has currently removed SF as a courier option on its e-commerce platform Taobao and Cainiao Guo Guo has blocked all third platform interfaces including SF Express, according to the announcement.

SF Express' flights are expected to accelerate the delivery/VCG Photo‍

Cainiao claimed that it was SF Express and Hive Box's unwillingness to cooperate with the latest security update on logistics data that led to the spat.

According to a statement published on Thursday, the company said that it has signed a cooperation strategy agreement with 15 logistics companies, including SF Express, to improve open connection late May. However, they received a notification from SF saying that the courier service provider would suspend its data sharing. SF then halted sending returned data to Cainiao earlier Thursday.

Blaming SF for a decision that may result in confusion and losses for both vendors and customers, Taobao has already advised merchants to stop using SF Express' services to avoid losses.

"SF Express' decision to stop returning logistics data would influence one million customers daily," warned Cainiao.

China's State Post Bureau has mediated, urging both companies to take the big picture into consideration and to preserve the market order and clients' rights and benefits. "The dispute between companies can't be a source of negative impact on the whole society," said the bureau's notification.

Robots sort parcels for Chinese courier companies/VCG Photo

With the explosion of China's e-commerce sector, the courier industry has seen rapid growth. For the sixth consecutive year, the industry grew last year by 50 percent in terms of business volume.

Last year alone, China managed 31.35 billion deliveries, accounting for 40 percent of the 70 billion parcels delivered globally, bringing in a staggering 400 billion yuan (58.7 billion dollars).