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Alibaba unveils AliExpress for online transactions

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: Alibaba.com, a small business e-commerce company, today formally launched AliExpress, an e-commerce platform offering smaller-quantity orders, instant online transactions, and an escrow service to protect buyers and sellers.

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Alibaba.com has launched AliExpress as an additional tool to serve its small business customer base. While Alibaba.com focuses on larger quantity orders including prototype and custom manufacturing, AliExpress directly addresses the needs of businesses that need smaller quantities available for immediate shipment.

The company would invest more than US$100 million in the development of AliExpress to ensure it delivers the features and services that will help small businesses succeed, said a press release.

“AliExpress is designed to help even the smallest businesses to be more competitive because they can offer customers more unique products, at better prices through the benefits to global trade,” said David Wei, CEO of Alibaba.com.

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He added, “As we previously announced, we believe that small businesses are the key drivers to economic growth and stability as well as job growth. AliExpress is one of many offerings planned to help small businesses grow and create jobs in their communities all over the world.”

An important asset for customers on AliExpress is the escrow service. Escrow payment protects all users who transact online at AliExpress by holding the buyer’s payment in a separate account and alerting the supplier that payment has been made so they can safely ship the goods. Once the buyer has received the goods, the payment is released to the supplier. This allows the supplier to ship their valuable goods with confidence, and the buyer to place their order knowing their payment is protected until their merchandise has been received.

“AliExpress provides a trusted payment system that makes transactions easy,” said Anthony Daniel, owner of Factory Direct Technology in Wilmington, N.C.

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He added, “In addition, there are consistently great deals available on the site and this has helped Factory Direct Technology quickly achieve success in a short amount of time.”

Alibaba.com also announced that it is offering a number of special promotions for customers on AliExpress throughout the next month. Launching today, the first promotion, GaGa Deals, which include drastic discounts on select products in a limited timeframe.

Alibaba.com launched a beta test of AliExpress in September 2009. Currently, there are more than three million listed products from more than 40 consumer products categories.