China's Alibaba is courting European and U.S. small businesses as it goes global

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is ramping up its global expansion with new services aimed at attracting small businesses in the U.S. and Europe.

Alibaba.com — the company's business-to-business platform which sells to companies outside China — announced Thursday it's launching «Alibaba Guaranteed» to provide greater certainty on delivery, payments and dispute settlement.

The platform is part of Alibaba's fast-growing international business, which also sells directly to consumers overseas through sites such as AliExpress.

While consumers in China have long enjoyed delivery tracking and favorable return policies, small businesses buying from cross-border e-commerce platforms have not, due to the added complexity of international trade.

Alibaba.com's new service aims to provide buyers with more definite delivery dates and free local returns, the company said in a press release.

«We think this is in line with current global trends,» Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, said in an interview Thursday, according to CNBC's translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

He noted an increasing trend of fragmentation in supply chains, and said a growing number of local businesses, whether in cosmetics or the autos industry, need to buy globally in order to protect profit margins.

The online platform mostly sells products from China-based suppliers to small businesses in Europe, the U.S. and other parts of the world. Alibaba.com's website indicates it's possible to buy single products, or in bulk, but notes on its user registration page that «suppliers prefer to do business with companies.»

Zhang claimed that in the past five years, the number of buyers on Alibaba.com have at least tripled, with online gross merchandise