Alibaba.com, a leading global business-to-business e-commerce company, said in its financial report it added more than 126,000 paying members last year, a record rise of 41 percent.

The financial report, published in Hong Kong Thursday and available on its website, said the online trading company's paying members increased to 432,031 as of Dec. 31, 2008, a rise of 41 percent over 2007.

It chalked up 3.001 billion yuan (about 441 million U.S. dollars) in total revenue in the past year, and 1.205 billion in net income (profit attributable to equity owners) last year, up 39 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

It saw an increase of 10.5 million registered users and 1.7 million online storefronts for international and domestic market transactions in 2008, and had a total of 38.1 million registered users and 4.6 million online storefronts as of Dec. 31, 2008.

Of the total, the number of registered users for international transactions swelled by 3.5 million to hit 7.9 million last year, a rise of 80 percent and a record high.

Alibaba, with headquarters in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, went public on the Hong Kong bourse in November 2007.

As of the end of 2008, the number of China's Internet users jumped by nearly 42 percent from a year earlier to 298 million, said China Internet Network Information Center in a report in January.

Source: Xinhua