China's central bank has licensed 27 third-party online payment providers, to improve payment processing and money transfers.

The news from the People's Bank of China will allow these companies, including Alipay, Tenpay and YeePay.com, to enjoy larger shares of a competitive emerging market.

Speaking to the Global Times, Chen Liang spokesperson for China's largest third-party payment services provider Alipay claimed: "It clarifies which kind of businesses a company can conduct and which it cannot for the first time."

Alipay is part of China's Alibaba Group, which is the largest ecommerce group in the country and controls around half of the online payment market.

Due to an increased interest in online shopping, transactions via third-party payment service providers were valued at 374.7billion Yuan (£35 billion) in the first quarter of 2011, according to figures from Analysys International.

Total transaction values in 2010 showed a sequential growth rate per quarter of 95 per cent in the third-party payment market.