Is Alipay safe?

Is Alipay safe? 7 things you should know about Alipay

Mobile payments have become an increasingly popular payment method around the world, especially in China. Mobile payments like Alipay are even more dominant, and you hardly ever see anyone paying with real money, which makes some people wonder: Is Alipay really safe?

In this article, we'll analyze Alipay's reliability from multiple perspectives to see if it's truly safe for people to use as a primary payment method in daily life and business.

1. What is Alipay's corporate background?
2.Does Alipay have buyer protection?
3. Is Alipay safer than PayPal?
4. Can someone else use my Alipay without my permission?
5. Is it possible to hack Alipay?
6.How secure are my Alipay transactions?
7.How to avoid Alipay scam?

1. What is Alipay’s corporate background?
Alipay is owned by the renowned Alibaba Group, one of China's largest multinational technology companies, operating in various business sectors, including the internet, e-commerce, and retail.

With a market value of over $800 billion, Alibaba owns several major e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress, Alibaba, and Taobao.

According to Wikipedia, Alibaba has the sixth-highest brand valuation in the world, and its online sales and e-commerce platform profits have surpassed all other US retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, and eBay combined.

Considering Alibaba's capital level, it can be said that Alibaba's risk-reduction capabilities are beyond imagination.

2. Does Alipay offer buyer protection?
Alipay provides protection to buyers when items are not delivered or do not match the seller's description.

In the event of a delivery failure or a seller's description that does not match, the buyer may be fully or partially refunded the transaction amount.

The security of users' financial information is also guaranteed by Alipay's advanced security technology and high data encryption standards; since Alipay's launch, there have been no known online leaks of user information.

3. Is Alipay safer than PayPal?
Alipay and PayPal offer payment solutions to buyers and sellers. As third-party payment service providers, Alipay and PayPal are supposed to act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers.

But in fact, in terms of disputes, PayPal's scale leans more toward the buyer's side, while Alipay plays a role as a true escrow agent: it doesn't get directly involved in any disputes between buyers and sellers.

If you're a shopper who often places orders you're unsure about, you might want to consider using PayPal, as you can enable PayPal's PAD (Pay After Delivery) service for most of your transactions.

The PAD service allows you to pay for purchased items at least 14 days after the transaction date.

While from a seller's perspective, PayPal may not be a very attractive option for you.

Once your buyer opens a dispute, your funds could be immediately frozen, leaving you in a fairly passive position. On top of that, PayPal can also do whatever it wants with your account and the funds within it at any time; it's literally in their service agreement.

4. Can someone else use my Alipay account without my permission?
In theory, no one else can access your Alipay account.

For one thing, login passwords and payment passwords are different, and there are several types of passwords, including biological codes like fingerprints, facial expressions, and even voice. Therefore, hacking an Alipay account is almost impossible.

On the other hand, any unauthorized transactions are covered by Alipay's member protection policy.

An "unauthorized transaction" means a transaction that transfers money from your Alipay account or the bank cards linked to your Alipay account, and such transaction is not authorized by you and jeopardizes your benefits.

More specifically, if someone stole your password and the thief accessed your account using the stolen password and made a transaction, that transaction would be considered an "unauthorized transaction."

However, if someone uses the Alipay account information you provided to access your account and make a transaction that you do not recognize, that transaction will not be considered an "unauthorized transaction."

Once you discover any allegedly authorized transactions occurring on your account, you can submit the transaction information and documents related to the transaction to Alipay.

If Alipay confirms the unauthorized transaction, the full amount of the relevant transaction will be credited to your Alipay account or directly to the bank cards linked to your Alipay account.

There's one more thing you should keep in mind before entering the unauthorized transaction confirmation process: the compensation limit will vary depending on your financial resources.

If the unauthorized transaction amount is transferred from the bank cards linked to your Alipay account, you may receive the full amount of the relevant transaction.

If the unauthorized transaction amount is transferred from the stored value of your Alipay account, the compensation limit will be $500 or $250 depending on whether you have completed KYC (Know Your Customer) verification with Alipay.

5. Is it possible to hack Alipay?
Alibaba Group is not only a global e-commerce giant but also one of the world's most advanced technology companies. Alipay, powered by Alibaba, is one of the most secure payment channels on the planet.

However, considering the evolution of technology today, it would be a lie to say that hacking a website is impossible. But hacking something like Alipay is extremely difficult and dangerous, and it will cost far more than you and I can imagine.

Compared to external hacking, insiders can pose an even greater risk. Employee fraud can be much more difficult to prevent than security breaches and technical errors.

For regular Alipay users, hacker attacks are the least of their worries when it comes to account security.

6. How secure are my Alipay transactions?
Every transaction made on Alipay is closely monitored by Alipay's real-time risk monitoring system 24/7.

This AI-powered risk engine will perform real-time analysis of transaction data and determine the risk level of each transaction based on factors including user behavior.

With the strong support of this risk engine, Alipay's fraud loss rate has remained significantly lower than the industry average: less than $0.64 in losses per $10 million in payments.

This powerful AI engine has four core features: evolution, perception, AI detection, and autopilot. It can detect and analyze fraud attempts and automatically take countermeasures. It can react in a second, even to new risks that have never been presented before.

Security, above all else, is the most critical issue any wireless payment service provider must overcome.

In the early stages of Alipay's development, it barely gained public trust. Over time, Alipay has proven capable enough to safeguard its users' assets.

7. How to avoid Alipay scams?
Although Alipay's security system is unbreakable across any internal channel, there are some external physical risks that users should take precautions against.

As we all know, when we use Alipay, we're essentially scanning QR codes: either you scan me or I'll scan you. While QR codes are very convenient and easy to use, they're also very vulnerable and easy to steal.

Generally, there are two types of QR codes: payment codes, which are used to pay sellers, and collection codes, which are used to collect money from buyers.

These codes can be easily generated, copied or replaced.

For example, a news story went viral on the internet a while back, claiming that a man had replaced all the Alipay payment codes on an entire shopping street by simply covering the original payment codes with his own, causing a huge amount of losses in a very short period of time.

For security reasons, we suggest you keep the following tips in mind when using QR codes to avoid being scammed:

Make sure no one can easily scan it when you're about to show your payment code.
Confirm the payment code with the payment recipient as much as possible.
Check for any traces of replacement on codes posted in public places.
If used correctly, Alipay should be safe enough for everyone.

We can't say there's a flawless system in this world, but perfection isn't what makes it secure. Billions of users have placed their trust in Alipay, and that's what will drive Alipay to build a safer and more secure environment, to become even better.