The world's largest online payment company, Alipay.com Co., Ltd., Wednesday announced it had begun offering payment services in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in partnership with MasterCard Worldwide.

Online shoppers from the three regions can use MasterCard to pay for goods purchased from Alibaba's e-commerce website, Taobao.com., and 460,000 other merchants using Alipay as their preferred payment platform.

Alipay is the world's largest online payment company in terms of registered users, surpassing PayPal in 2009. But Alipay's stronghold is mainly on the Chinese mainland.

The company said the move was a step towards having a global footprint. It linked up with Visa in 2009 to offer similar services in the three areas.

"Now with our cooperation with MasterCard, our services are available to most credit cards-owners in the areas," said Peng Lei, chief executive officer of Alipay.

It's parent company, Alibaba Group, announced a 5-billion-yuan (732 million U.S. dollars) investment over five years in Alipay on April 12. "The investment is mainly used to expand our business overseas," said Peng.

Alibaba chief executive officer Jack Ma said Alibaba would throw its weight behind Alipay in its global expansion.

Alipay has more than 300 million registered users with a transaction value exceeding 1.2 billion yuan daily.