China United Airlines (CUA) and Chinese online payment provider AliPay have entered into a strategic cooperation.

CUA and AliPay will work together on e-ticketing services for B2B and B2C businesses. Now AliPay users can log onto CUA's website with their AliPay accounts and pay for their tickets by AliPay, online banking services or credit cards.

CUA is not the only airline to cooperate with AliPay, Hainan Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines are already partners of AliPay.

Through such cooperation, not only can airlines reduce their cost of sales and improve the convenience of their ticketing service, but they also benefit from the 180 million existing AliPay users, which is a huge potential market for air carriers.