CRI听力:Alipay Attacked by Anti-Taobao Group

On the online chat service yy.com, some Taobao merchants have said that Alipay is making use of user's capital to engage in under-the-table deals. They have called on users to withdraw their money from their Alipay accounts to test the payment system.

Alipay immediately refuted the comments on their official online micro-blog and claimed that they were defamatory. A Public Relations Manager from the Alipay Company who didn't provide his name says that the attack won't threaten the financial security of their system.

"The withdrawals won't affect our system at all since we entrust the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to save the capital from the Alipay accounts. We've never touched the money saved in there. So it won't affect the system at all if the users take their money out of it."

But some customers said that they could not place orders smoothly for quite some time when the protest was happening. Now, many online customers are questioning whether a major surge in withdrawals from Alipay would actually result in a malfunction in its system. The PR manager explains what happened during that period of time.

"We rebooted the major server during that time, that's why some of the customers found that it wasn't working very well but not every customer had these problems."

But some IT experts indicate that it's quite rare for E-commerce businesses to reboot their whole system during business hours.

Recently, Alibaba's stock performance was quite sluggish, which was mainly due to the previous protest against Taobao. The situation has provoked suspicions as to whether the company has quietly withdrawn money from Alipay to buttress the value of their stock.

Alipay believes those suspicions spreading among merchants are all just part of a smear campaign and they've already reported them to the police office based in Hangzhou, where the company is located. They contend that the anti-Taobao group have violated the normal standards of the financial environment, and have allegedly broken the law.

Based on the accusations from Alipay, the anti-taobao group also retorted that the action was only to test the functionality of Alipay, and the withdrawals were common practices randomly done by users. It's also legal for sellers and buyers to deal with their own accounts. But IT expert Qu Xiaodong says it's not wise to do so.

"I think such actions are against the law. The attack is not only damaging Alibaba and Taobao's profits, but also infringing upon the rights of users."

It still remains uncertain as to whether, by coordinating a simultaneous withdrawal, the small and medium-sized merchants have broken the law. Some commentators say the business models of the E-commerce trading platforms, the merchants and the online consumers are all affecting one another. Rational decisions are required to protect the rights of these groups, as opposed to ill-considered actions in the heat of the moment.

For CRI, I'm Liu Min.