Alipay
A leading mobile payment platform owned by Ant Group, offering comprehensive financial services beyond basic transactions.
What is Alipay?
Alipay, established in 2004 as part of Alibaba’s ecosystem, processes over $20.1 trillion in transactions in 2025, capturing 53% of China’s mobile payment market through features like QR code payments, bill splitting, and investment tools. It supports over 1 billion users globally, with strong adoption in e-commerce via platforms like Taobao and Tmall, and extends to offline retail with contactless payments.
In digital asset contexts, Alipay integrates with e-CNY for CBDC transactions, enabling seamless use of digital yuan in daily payments, and has piloted blockchain-based features for supply chain finance. By 2025, its POS adoption in China stands at around 80%, down slightly from 2020 peaks due to regulatory shifts, but it remains pivotal in cross-border payments, accepted in over 80 countries.
Related Terms
Front Running
The practice of observing pending transactions in a blockchain’s mempool and submitting a similar transaction with a higher gas fee to prioritize its confirmation, often to gain a financial advantage.
BUIDL
The act of actively building and contributing to the development of decentralized technologies and ecosystems, rather than solely investing or speculating.
Depth Chart
A visual graph depicting the cumulative buy and sell orders across price ranges in an order book.
APY (Lending)
The annualized percentage yield in DeFi lending, accounting for interest compounding.
KYC
Regulatory process verifying user identities to prevent illicit activities, mandatory on centralized exchanges but optional in DeFi.
Don't Trust, Verify
"Don't Trust, Verify" is a core principle in blockchain technology, emphasizing that users should independently validate transactions and data on the network rather than relying on intermediaries.