Alipay Plans Fees to Transfer Money Back to Banks

(Beijing) — Alipay, Alibaba's third-party payment service, will start charging individual users a fee to transfer money out of their accounts to banks.

The announcement follows a similar move earlier this year by its major competitor, Tencent's WeChat. Tencent had said bank fees for the transfers were costing the company tens of millions of yuan a month.

Alipay, which is owned by Ant Financial Services Group, the financial-services affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, said on Monday that as of Oct. 12, individual users will be charged 0.1 percent of what they transfer out of their Alipay accounts to bank accounts after the first 20,000 yuan ($2,990).