When I started Alibaba, banks were skeptical about our payment system, claiming it would never work, but I knew that without a payment solution, e-commerce would not succeed.

I realized that to build a trust system in e-commerce, we needed to create an escrow account to hold payments until the buyer received their product, ensuring security for both parties.

Creating trust was essential for Alibaba's success, especially since people in China were used to face-to-face transactions. In today's world, trust is lacking among people, governments, and media, but e-commerce facilitates 60 million transactions daily, creating a system of trust despite the anonymity between buyers and sellers.

We built an integration with Alipay because we recognized its potential, even if businesses initially didn't see its relevance.

Our rapid growth since launch has been driven by a charmingly relentless push to modernize an industry that I believe is sleepwalking towards a precipice, especially regarding payment solutions like Apple Pay that don't integrate well with outdated systems.

We sent a co-founder to China to build a mobile team because we needed to move faster and couldn't develop it internally.

We realized that if PayPal failed, it would create a massive loss of over $200 million in venture capital, so we decided to pitch our best ideas to each other, including an early version of LinkedIn.

After selling PayPal to eBay in October 2002, I recognized that the consumer internet was just beginning, contrary to the belief that it was over, and I decided to pursue the LinkedIn idea.

The launch of Shopify Payments was perfectly timed and significantly contributed to the company's rapid growth.