On March 20th, Alibaba and China Post forged an agreement to launch an online postal remittance service. The venture was formally publicized nationwide after a successful trial period held in the Zhejiang province last December Currently, the temporary upper limit of online postal remittance is RMB 5,000 (646.31 USD). The charge of the service is dependent on the sum being sent but the service itself has a minimum fee of RMB 2 (0.26 USD). During the publicizing period, however, this service is free of charge nationwide.

Users can directly use cash or their postal green card to deal with their online accounts. Passwords are available and payments can be made at local post offices. When these are set up, users can fill out online postal fee remittance forms and make payments via their Alipay accounts (alipay.com).

At the end of last November, the State Postal Bureau of the People's Republic of China and the Alibaba Group jointly signed an e-commerce strategic cooperation agreement. Both sides will establish a long-term strategic partnership in the areas of e-commerce information flow, capital flow and logistics.

As a cooperative project in the "capital flow" section of the agreement, the online remittance service is launched in conjunction with over 30,000 postal remittance network outlets nationwide.