Taobao, Yahoo Japan team up for e-commerce deal

The deal, effective 1 June, further sees Yahoo Japan providing eight million product listings to mainland consumers though TaoJapan, the Chinese-language platform offering Japanese products to Taobao users. That service will be jointly operated by Taobao and Alibaba.com Japan Co.

Inversely, Taobao’s vendors can sell their goods on Yahoo! Japan’s China Mall.

According to the companies, the deal allows merchants to sell goods and process sales in their respective languages as well as allowing buyers to pay for purchases using existing e-payment solutions such as Alipay.

“We expect that the Asian economy will continue to grow further led mainly by China and Japan, and that the internet and e-commerce business will be the core of that growth,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Corp and chairman of the board at Yahoo Japan.

Both companies have existing ties to Yahoo. Softbank is the majority stakeholder in Yahoo Japan, with a nearly 41 per cent interest, whereas Alibaba Group is the majority shareholder in Yahoo! China.

Last year, Yahoo put its 1.14 per cent stake in Alibaba.com up for sale, worth US$150 million. Yahoo additionally holds a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba Group, which was not affected by the sale.

Alibaba and Yahoo Japan’s announcement comes as the e-commerce landscape escalates for Chinese and Japanese players. Earlier this year, Chinese search engine Baidu and Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten pledged a combined $50 million over three years to launch a business-to-business and business-to-consumer online shopping mall for Chinese netizens.

The venture was said to be a direct attempt to lure users away from China's leading ecommerce sites, Alibaba.com and Taobao.com, and will sell goods from both domestic and international brands and will additionally cater to SMEs.