Reviewed 2026-09-30 · quarterly cycle
The payment layer is where a haul stops being about goods and starts being about plumbing, and Alipay is the layer most buyers interact with without thinking about it. Its important property for a haul is that funding and settlement are separate steps. Money enters a balance through one channel at one rate, and it leaves that balance to pay for goods at another moment entirely. The rate you paid to fund the balance is baked into your cost before you have chosen an item.
The behaviour that surprises buyers most is the refund path. Refunds return to the balance rather than to the original funding source, which means a cancelled order leaves value inside the platform rather than back in your bank. For a buyer who funds exactly what they intend to spend, that is invisible. For a buyer who tops up a round figure, it means a residual balance that can be awkward to recover, particularly on account types where withdrawal is not available.
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This object sits outside the six-stage rail. It moves money before a parcel exists, which is why its cost is easy to forget when the haul is totalled later.
| Line | Range or basis | Basis stated |
|---|---|---|
| Top-up conversion | Rate set by the funding channel, not by the marketplace | Channel-published rates; the rate you see depends on how the balance was funded rather than on what you are buying. |
| Refund path | Returns to the balance rather than to the original funding source | Platform-published behaviour; this is the point that surprises buyers most. |
| Withdrawal | Not available for many account types | Account-type dependent; treat the balance as committed to the platform rather than as cash. |
Because refunds return to the balance rather than to your original funding source, a refund on a cancelled order can leave money that is expensive to get back out. Fund the amount you intend to spend rather than a round figure above it.
Verification requests arrive at the least convenient moment, usually after a first payment. Completing verification before a time-sensitive order is cheaper than completing it while an order is waiting.
A cancellation that is confirmed immediately can still settle to the balance days later. Plan the next order around the settled balance rather than the confirmation, or the next order will fail at payment.
Verification is the second recurring friction. Requests arrive after a first transaction rather than before, which is rational from the platform side and inconvenient from the buyer side. The practical ordering is to complete verification during a period when no order is time-sensitive, because a verification request that lands while an order is waiting costs the difference between a fast dispatch and a slow one.
Settlement timing is the third. A cancellation confirmed today can settle to the balance in a few days, and an order placed against the confirmation rather than the balance fails at payment. This is a small thing that produces a surprising number of support tickets, and the fix is simply to sequence the next order after the funds have settled rather than after the cancellation has been acknowledged.
None of this is a criticism of the payment layer. It is a description of the order in which things happen, and the haul arithmetic changes depending on whether you treat the balance as cash or as credit. We treat it as credit, which is why our fee comparator asks for the payment channel as an input rather than assuming one.
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