On Alizila: Sharks or Scammers: Who's the Top Predator?

Hey guys,

Fraud Sharks or Scammers?

In an act of shameless self-promotion, here's a cross-post from my other site, Alibaba Fair Fund Facts. 

If you have read this blog at all, you know that I am a total Alibaba Fan Boy.  So I was surprised to find out that they have a news site that is different from their newsroom:  a site called "Alizila" that says that it is news and commentary about and from Alibaba.  Interesting concept.
So again, seeking forgiveness before permission, I've included a timely post below about fraud and scams. Its' called 'Sharks or Scammers: Who's the Top Predator?"  I have posted highlights below, but it's sort of interesting to see how little (as a percentage) scams, rip-offs or fraud represents as part of transactions.  Not that the Alibaba Fair Play Fund is perfect, but it's still an interesting study.

As we suspected, online shoppers in China are far more likely to be victimized by scams than they are to be eaten by sharks. We now know this because the China Internet Network Information Center just released a report containing the following statistical nugget: during the first six months of the year, 8 percent of China's online shoppers—38.8 million people—said they had indeed lost their lunch money to fraud.

Ergo, one out of every 12.5 e-shoppers gets skinned over a six-month period. The global odds of being killed by a shark in any given year are one in 252 million, give or take. Oh, and the odds that you live in China and are reading this blog: approximately one in 2.2 million, based on our latest Google Analytics traffic data. Congratulations on being a rare and discriminating individual.

While we are downloading random e-commerce stats, iResearch says that the transaction volume of online payments in China reached RMB 456.6 billion ($71 million) in the second quarter. We mention this because the year-over-year increase, at nearly 118 percent, is striking. We also mention this because iResearch found that Alipay, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, still holds almost 50 percent of the market, leagues ahead of No. 2 online-payments provider Tenpay with a 21 percent share.

The overall high transaction growth rate was due to the continuing rapid spread of e-commerce in China, particularly in online hotel and airline ticket booking, as well as the emergence of online financial and logistics services, iResearch says. Alipay in the quarter made rapid progress following the introduction of its Quick Pay service; the company also made inroads with major airlines. Tenpay has been a leading payment solutions provider in China’s group-shopping market.