Alibaba-affiliated online payment service Alipay has blamed a data leak for the unauthorized linking of a customer’s account for payments to multiple e-commerce websites, but didn’t clarify whether other users experiencing the same problem were victims of the same leak, Caixin reported. An unnamed Alipay employee said that the team responsible for designing the company’s website had considered requiring users to verify such links, but chose to skip the step. A central bank report cited by Caixin stated a January leak of data related to more than 10 million bank cards at an unnamed payment firm had led to RMB40 million (US$6.295 million) in losses. For more on data security and e-commerce in China, see CER’s special report.