Apple News and Alibaba IPO: CEOs Tim Cook and Jack Ma to Discuss Uniting ...

First Posted: Oct 28, 2014 04:54 PM EDT

As if Apple and Alibaba weren't already large companies, the two are now looking to partner and could streamline financial payments.

Jack Ma, Alibaba's executive chairman, said his company is interested in joining forces with California-based Apple and is particularly interested in its recently announced payment system called Apple Pay, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Apple Pay is a service that allows iPhone users to pay for items by just scanning the phone in stores. The Apple Pay account would be linked with debit and credit cards, making it a kind of virtual wallet.

Ma's company already has a payments service called Alipay that has 300 million active users. It's not clear how the partnership would work, and talks have not started yet.

'I hope we can do something together,' Ma said, but added that it would only happen if it was a marriage that both parties wanted.

Apple is the most valuable company in the world and Alibaba just had the world's largest-ever initial public offering, raising $25 billion in September. Since its IPO, Alibaba shares have risen 44 percent and the company has a market capitalization of more than $240 billion, making it larger than Amazon and eBay combined.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said he plans to meet with Ma this week, while the Alibaba head is in the U.S. Cook said that Alibaba has all the characteristics of a company that Apple would like to partner with but wasn't clear about how the two could work together.

Cook said on Monday that in the three days after Apple Pay launched on Oct. 20, users registered more than 1 million credit cards, and the service is now available in over than 200,000 stores, Time reported.

'You are only relevant as a retailer or merchant if your customers love you,' he said. 'It's the first and only mobile payment system that's easy, private and secure.'