Alipay, the Chinese mobile payment platform operated by Ant Financial, is set to begin charging Alipay fees to those customers who use its platform to pay off credit card debt.
The Alipay fees said to be in response to increasing operating costs.
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Under the plan, Alipay will impose service fee of 0.1% for monthly repayments of more than RMB2,000 ($298).
Repayments below this amount will be free of charge. The Alipay fees move is expected to be effective from 26 March 2019.
WeChat Pay, Chinese tech giant Tencent’s payment platform, also made a similar move last year.
However, according to insiders, such decisions are not expected to have a far-reaching effect on users.
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By GlobalDataThe reason is that credit card repayments can also be done through free services including online banking.
At present, Alipay has an active user base of more than one billion worldwide.
Last June, Ant Financial raised around $14bn.
At that time, the firm said that it use the capital to ramp up Alipay’s expansion plan and invest in new technologies.
