China's Supreme People's Court ruled that Alibaba Group, along with its Taobao and Tmall platforms, abused its dominant market position by restricting payments to only Alipay. The top court overturned a lower court's decision, siding with a consumer who filed the lawsuit. The case pertained to the period between June 2017 and August 2021, when users registering for Taobao or Tmall had to accept Alipay as the exclusive third-party mobile payment option. The verdict referenced a 2021 administrative penalty by China's State Administration for Market Regulation, which had imposed a record $2.6 billion fine on Alibaba for similar abusive conduct. That prior decision had established that Alibaba controlled a majority of China's online retail platform market. This new ruling illustrates the growing alignment between judicial and administrative enforcement against monopolistic practices in the country.