Alibaba, Ant Financial to lower costs for SMEs amid anti-virus campaign

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and fintech firm Ant Financial announced 20 measures Monday to mitigate the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by lowering their costs.

Alibaba will waive the service charges for all merchants on the company's Tmall shopping platform in the first half of the year, said the company.

Cainiao Network Technology, Alibaba's logistics arm, decided to exempt two months' storage charges for warehousing merchants who join the platform prior to March 31.

To ease the financing pressure of SMEs, MYbank, an online bank affiliated to Ant Financial, offered loans worth 10 billion yuan (about 1.43 billion U.S. dollars) to merchants registered in virus-hit Hubei Province.

Other measures announced by the two companies included promoting job-sharing, subsidizing logistics and providing digital service.