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Not long ago, about a week ago, many users payment system Alipay started receiving letters to their e-mails. The essence of the letter is that the Alipay payment system is stopping customer service for Aliexpress. We learned about this not from a letter, but simply, if you, like us, recently paid for an order on Aliexpress, you probably noticed a warning above about the need to use up your available balance on Alipay before the new year.

We would like to note right away that nothing terrible is expected, but still, if you have a certain amount in your Alipay account, received, for example, as a result, then this information will be useful to you.

Many people know that the Alipay payment system is part of the Alibaba Group as well as Alibaba itself, so the planned changes are only internal optimization of payment processes, which should not in any way affect new and existing buyers on Aliexpress, as stated in the official statement.

We regret to inform you that due to business adjustments, the Alipay balance service will be terminated from January 1, 2017 (PDT). Please use up your remaining balance as soon as possible. Click here to find more details.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

The reasons why Aliexpress refuses Alipay remain a mystery, but apparently the concept of further development has undergone changes, otherwise how can one explain the first imposition of its payment system on all users, and now the refusal of it. Yes, it’s an imposition, it’s not in vain that many people were looking for it before.

In fact, we are not talking about the closure of Alipay, the payment system will not disappear anywhere, it only implies the abandonment of the Alipay balance, all other functions will remain unchanged. So, what do you need to do with your Alipay account before the new year? Detailed instructions, but below we will give detailed explanations in Russian.

According to published information, on January 1, 2017, the ability to pay for purchases on AliExpress will disappear, but only using the Alipay balance. If you want, these changes will not affect you in any way. Alipay will continue to process payment transactions on AliExpress as before, but if as a result of previous disputes on Aliexpress you have a balance on your Alipay balance, then you need to do a few simple steps, namely:

• If your Alipay account balance is less than $30, then automatically after the new year Aliexpress will begin to exchange the balance of Alipay for AliExpress coupons (with a high degree of probability the nominal amount of coupons will be rounded up)
• If the amount of your Alipay account exceeds $30, then the same $30 will be automatically transferred to Aliexpress coupons, but the remaining funds will be withdrawn to your bank account (note that international bank transfer is not cheap and usually does not cost less than $15, so if the amount If yours is not significant, it is preferable to simply spend it on Alipay before the changes take effect)

Alipay and Aliexpress plans to start issuing balances on the Alipay wallet around mid-January. The validity period of the received coupon will be one year from the date of its issue.

In this case, the coupon will be given to you, and not purchased as a gift certificate, so it is more appropriate to spend the rest of your Alipay balance on, thereby making the most of these changes.

If for some reason you did not manage to use up your Alipay wallet balance, then inside your account you will be able to track the status of the withdrawal of the remaining funds to your bank account, but please note that a bank transfer may take from 7-10 business days from the moment of sending, to Ultimately, everything will depend on your bank.

How can I now pay for orders on AliExpress without Alipay?

In fact, Alipay is as it was and will remain so, it’s just that now, apparently, as a result, the funds will be returned in the form of a certain internal Aliexpress account. These are just guesses, there have been no official statements yet, but otherwise why all these changes.

Functionally, nothing really changes; even before, funds from the Alipay balance could only be spent for further purchases. Now everything will be exactly the same, only without the Alipay balance.

If you've shopped at one of them, you're probably familiar with theirs. In a nutshell, it represents the internal account into which the money is returned as a result of the refund, which can later be used for further purchases. True, there, upon request, you can cash out the balance of this account; it is not yet clear how Aliexpress will act in this regard.

Everything is done, of course, with the goal of increasing sales, but on the other hand, the buyer ultimately will not lose anything. Of course, it is also possible to have an option with a direct refund to the account from which the payment was made, but to be honest, this option is doubtful. In the end, time will tell everything, and besides, there is very little left.

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Since yesterday, October 12, 2016, many AliExpress users who had previously linked an Alipay wallet to their account and paid for their orders using this payment system began to receive letters with mailboxes subdomain alipay.com with the following message:

Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that due to business adjustments, the Alipay balance service will be terminated from January 1, 2017 (PDT). Please use up your remaining balance as soon as possible. to find more details.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you.
Alipay

A similar message, but already on native language, can be seen if you log into your AliExpress account and go to the menu using the “My Alipay” link:

The same message is displayed at the top of the page when you go to pay for a placed order on the AliExpress website.

The essence of the question

From the beginning of the new year, the AliExpress platform will stop servicing Alipay accounts. This means that it will become impossible to replenish them, as well as receive refunds on won disputes to your Alipay accounts.

However, users have not been able to top up their Alipay account for a long time. But in some cases, refunds for disputed transactions were still credited to Alipay’s account.

In any case, if someone has unspent funds on such an account, the AliExpress administration strongly recommends using them to pay for their orders before the new year.

Alipay account termination algorithm

2. If the client has an amount not exceeding $30 on his account, it will be compensated to the user in the form of a coupon, which can be used when paying for an order on AliExpress throughout 2017 (more precisely, it will be valid for 1 year from the date of its issue).

The coupon amount will somehow be “approximated” to the nearest integer value. Most likely, it will be rounded up. But this is just our guess.

The administration will begin issuing the corresponding coupons approximately from mid-January 2017.

3. If the Alipay account owner has more than $30 left, then $30 will be converted into the same AliExpress coupons, and the balance can be returned through a bank account (or through the system). But you should understand that such an operation will not be free. The detailed explanation, which is available at the following link, warns of a minimum fee for each bank transfer of $15. If the balance is large, the commission may be higher.

So it’s better to spend the remaining funds so as not to lose some money in the future.

You can withdraw funds remaining in your Alipay wallet after January 1, 2017 at. There you can track the status of all transfers. All bank transfers most often arrive at the client’s account within 7-10 business (bank) days.

How to pay for orders after January 1, 2017

Users will not have any problems due to the termination of Alipay account services on the AliExpress site. As now, it will be possible to pay for orders using various electronic money systems, such as Yandex Money, Webmoney, QIWI, as well as bank payment cards (including those linked to an Alipay account).

Deal with the issue of “emptying” your Alipay wallet now; later you may simply forget about the need to resolve this issue and have problems with withdrawing money.

For a long time, the Aliexpress platform offered its customers to use the Alipay wallet to pay for orders. It was convenient to link your card to Alipay and make quick payments without entering payment information each time.

But, unfortunately, in October 2016, Aliexpress officially announced that starting January 1, 2017, the site will no longer support payment for orders using the Alipay wallet. All customers who had an Alipay wallet opened and a bank card linked to their Alipay account received the following notification:

Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that due to business adjustments, the Alipay balance service will be terminated from January 1, 2017 (PDT). Please use up your remaining balance as soon as possible. to find more details.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you.

This message reads:

“Dear client, we regret to inform you that due to adjustments to the business plan, the provision of services balanceAlipay will be discontinued effective January 01, 2017 (Daytime Pacific Time). Please use your account balance as soon as possible. Click here for details»

Also, this notification can be seen in your Aliexpress account in the “My Alipay” section and when you try to register a new Alipay wallet.

In reality, this fact does not threaten buyers with anything terrible. You can also pay for your orders using bank cards. You simply will not be able to top up your Alipay wallet (now this opportunity absent). And also after December 31, 2016, you will not be able to pay for purchases from your Alipay wallet.

What to do with the remaining money in your Alipay wallet?

The only thing that buyers need to take care of is withdrawing money from their Alipay account. If you have opened an account there, be sure to check your balance. Perhaps you topped up your Alipay wallet, or received a refund there after a dispute. If there is money in your Alipay account, you need to withdraw it. The simplest option: pay for Aliexpress orders from your Alipay account before December 31, 2016 and use up the entire balance.

If you do not manage to meet this deadline, then the opportunity to make purchases on Aliexpress will no longer be available. But even in this case, your money will not be lost. If there is an amount on the account that does not exceed $30, the buyer will receive its equivalent in discount coupons, which he can use when paying for goods. These coupons will be valid until the end of 2017. And the Aliexpress administration will begin issuing them from mid-January. That is, the coupons will be valid for almost a year.

If there is an outstanding amount in your account that exceeds $30, then you will receive $30 in the form of a discount coupon for purchases, and the rest of the money will need to be received in your bank account. Moreover, this transfer is necessarily subject to a commission, the minimum amount of which is $15. The amount is quite large, so it is better to take care of withdrawing money from your Alipay wallet before the new year.

Have a question? Write it in the comments or chat March 23, 2016 at 15:32

Alipay - One Click Checkout: Should We Worry?

• Information security,
• Payment systems

Aliexpress is one of the most popular trading platforms, opening up the world Chinese goods for buyers from anywhere in the world. A small retreat about Alipay in order to consider the found problem in the security system.

Alipay (Alibaba's company) is a payment service that is very popular in China and is slowly beginning to spread throughout the world. In China, Alipay is used in many places and services; in other countries, Alipay is currently only used to pay for purchases on Aliexpress (also an Alibaba company). Currently, Alipay allows users to save a credit card, and also, when you make a purchase on Aliexpress, use the saved credit card to pay without actually entering its details.

Now that we know a little about the Alipay service, we can use it on Aliexpress. When you register on Alipay, we create a password as in every normal registration process. When using the service to pay, Alipay will ask you to enter a password to log in, but here's an interesting thing.

If you made a purchase through mobile application Aliexpress, when you are at home (and most buyers make purchases from home), the application on your smartphone or tablet will mark your home network(WiFi) as secure and will not ask you for a password on subsequent purchases! This will remain the case until you make a purchase from another network.

AliExpress and Alipay technical support representatives confirmed this and told me that this will be done as part of the "One Click Checkout" feature to make payment even easier for users.

Here is a landing page that explains the One Click Checkout process: http://activities.aliexpress.com/oneclickcheckout.php

Screenshot

All this makes me think about the security of the Alipay service, especially in three cases. The first two are two different options, but the result is the same.

Option #1: Let's say you lost your phone (without any lock), could someone find it and use your credit card to buy something?

Option #2: The same applies to the option in which someone stole your phone (also without locking);

Option #3: You want to fool Aliexpress and Alipay. Place orders and claim it wasn't you.

I decided to check each option. If I were someone who uses a found/stolen phone to use someone's credit card to buy things, what would I need:

The first is to be connected to a network that the Aliexpress mobile application remembers as safe. It's simple - all you need to do is find out the address of the real owner of the phone. I checked: the Aliexpress application has the owner's address and access to it, of course, without any protection! Now you just need to be close enough to wireless network in the owner's house/apartment and - yes! The phone automatically connects to the owner's router.

Second, I need to be able to change the address. Easy: go to the Aliexpress application > My Aliexpress > My profile > delivery addresses > Add a new address. Ready! No protection at all!

That is, you don’t need to work hard to hack anything, everything is already available.

Now about the third option: could I cheat myself and deceive Aliexpress / Alipay?

Of course, we know that this is possible: now I can make orders on my own, for this we need an address that has nothing to do with me (another name, surname, address, perhaps in another city or even in another country). A friend's address will do. Now I will place orders a couple of times a day for a certain period for small amounts of $100-$200, so as not to get on the radar of Alipay and the bank that issued the credit card.

After I have made a certain number of orders, and they have been sent by sellers, I can contact Aliexpress / Alipay support and claim that the orders were not made by me, and the money was actually stolen, and all this is due to a vulnerability, which can be used so easily.

Moreover, I can go to the police and report that my phone was stolen and provide Alipay with a statement as evidence.

After checking everything, I tried to contact technical support AliExpress/Alipay to report this vulnerability and received the following response:

Consider:

1. The user must log into his account to make a payment. Let's check - the Aliexpress application remains in the account forever after the owner has logged in. This won't help us.

2. Aliexpress / Alipay checks every payment: if there is something wrong with the data, we will ask for a password and other data. We check - AliExpress/Alipay refused to clarify what exactly they check from a security point of view, but as we have seen, AliExpress/Alipay cannot really know whether orders were made by the owner of the phone or not. These measures won't help either.

3. And finally, 100% compensation! Aliexpress generously promises compensation if something happens.

“And besides, paying without a password is much faster and easier, enjoy,” they advised me. It seems so logical - they just didn’t think that it would be as easy and quick for attackers to do it.

One last piece of advice from tech support: if you're still worried, just delete your data credit card! What? Somehow it doesn't inspire confidence. Shouldn't the system be safe and secure?

Let's sum it up

The vulnerability is very simple. It feels like each development team relied on others, and in the end the whole process is vulnerable! I hope AliExpress/Alipay will fix this vulnerability as soon as possible! It's too simple to leave as is! I tried many times to contact AliExpress/Alipay support to show this vulnerability, but always received the same answer: don't worry, everything is under control. Nobody wants to listen and remove this vulnerability.

I could have ended here, but I decided to dig a little more.

After I researched the new Aliexpress features, I found an additional vulnerability on the site. If someone has a phone with the Aliexpress app, they can log into the account quite easily on the website as well. All thanks to the new authorization process via a QR code located on the Aliexpress login page.

Pay attention to the QR sign in the corner of the account login page.

All you need to do is click on the QR code, scan it through the Aliexpress app and confirm. This will allow you to log into your account on the site without a password. Here you can see all user data, from here you can login account Alipay! Of course, you can't see credit card details, but you can see almost everything.

Finally, let's summarize

My recommendation for all Aliexpress / Alipay users: if you use the application and your credit card information is saved in this service, put a lock on your phone (this is generally important for the general security of your personal data) and be sure to enter your phone number in Alipay so that Receive alerts about purchases and payments: this way you will know if something happens.

Or do what Alipay support suggests: if you are still concerned about security, remove the credit card from the Alipay service.