Tencent's Tenpay expands in Taiwan

Chen Tang-peng, owner and founder of Chia Te Bakery Co, one of Taiwan's best-known pineapple cake gift brands, said one-third of his customers are mainland tourists, and he hopes to better reach out to mainland consumers with the service and its own online store.

Last year, online shoppers spent an average of 1,514 yuan per person on overseas shopping websites, according to Alipay, China's biggest online payment company. The total transaction volume of overseas shopping through Alipay increased by 117 percent year-on-year in 2012, compared with 64.7 percent growth in the domestic market over the same period.

Alipay provides a cross-border payment service that has enabled its users to shop on more than 1,000 overseas websites since 2007, it said.

Cosmetics, baby care products, clothing, health products, and electronic devices are the most popular categories for overseas shopping, and milk powder accounted for a quarter of total sales, said Alipay, which held 46.6 percent of China's online payment market last year, according to domestic research company Analysys International. Tenpay ranked second with 20.9 percent.

Zhejiang province, Guangdong province, Shanghai and Beijing took up half of China's total spending on overseas shopping websites last year, but Internet users in less developed second- and third-tier cities were catching up with a higher growth rate in terms of the money they spent, according to Alipay figures.