Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, said: "Like Alibaba's Alipay, I'd like to make Koreapay, online payment service optimized for Korea, for the Korean market." Those remarks were made at his first press event with news organizations in Korea in the Grand Hyatt Seoul on May 19.
"I hope that our company will be able to start Koreapay, in addition to Alipay," he said. "I'm really interested in cooperating with Korea in this regard, and our firm is currently searching for a partner company here to cooperate with Alipay."
Alibaba is going to jointly develop Koreapay with a partner company in the country and to cooperate in the operation, management, and development of the online payment service.
Sabrina Peng, the president of Alipay International said: "Instead of Alipay, it is necessary for Koreans to have Koreapay."
"Our company is searching for a partner company in Korea with excellent technical skills and influence, which will be given an opportunity to share our technologies for cloud, big data, and financial information that we have accumulated over the last 11 years. And I think that if a Korean company with technology on a par with our company and capability to localize our payment service cooperates with us, it will be possible to make true Koreapay," she said.
When asked about the company's plan for penetration into Korea, Jack Ma said: "Alibaba will not directly run any shopping mall in Korea."
"The idea is unthinkable, and I believe that our company would not make it," he said.
His remarks indicate that Alibaba is not a product-selling company, and instead it helps other firms do e-commerce businesses. Therefore, he stressed that he doesn't have any intention to run shopping malls in Korea.
Ma said: "Our company wants to build a partnership with Korean firms. To make that happen, we desire to cooperate in the fields of payment, logistics, and systemic training," adding, "In particular, we'd like to connect logistics around the world by cooperating with logistics companies in Korea."
He named mobile-based cloud and big data markets as his most interested areas. He also said that there will be a big innovation in the Online to Offline field, which has received a lot of attention recently, based on wireless devices.