Low fares leader Jetstar has announced a cooperation with China’s largest third-party payment company Alipay, giving hundreds of millions of Alipay users the ability to transact directly from their Alipay accounts when purchasing fares from Jetstar.com

The cooperation will support Jetstar’s growing Chinese customer base as the carrier expands its Chinese network, which will include nine Chinese destinations by November with the start of long haul services from Beijing to Singapore and then onto Melbourne*.

Alipay is an affiliate of the Alibaba Group in China. As of September 2011, Alipay had over 600 million registered users and accounted for about half of China’s online payment services market.

Jetstar Chief Group Commercial Officer Mr David Koczkar said, “Jetstar’s cooperation with Alipay will give our growing number of Chinese customers hassle free access to our all day every day low fares.

“In the last two years alone we have added six mainland Chinese destinations to our expanding network with more Chinese routes in development.

“Working with Alipay with its enormous customer reach and high trust ratings is part of our commitment to finding the best ways to deliver our low fares to the Chinese travelling community,” Mr Koczkar said.

Third party payment channels like Alipay are the preferred online payment option for Chinese consumers.

Alipay Chief Financial Officer Mr Eric Jing said, “Jetstar is one of Alipay’s important overseas merchants.

“We are pleased to work with Jetstar to enable more Chinese consumers to enjoy enhanced access to Jetstar’s quality services.”

Jetstar has also recently launched a dedicated Chinese booking site to better accommodate its Chinese customer base.

“China is Australia’s biggest export tourism market in terms of expenditure and Singapore’s second largest source of tourism traffic,” Mr Koczkar said.

“It is vital that we continue to innovate our product and distribution channels to make our low fares more and more accessible to the Chinese consumer.”

*Subject to regulatory approval.