Leading Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba is to take a 28 per cent stake in Autonavi, the company behind the country’s leading mobile mapping service, in a move that could boost its mobile commerce and payments plans.

Alibaba is paying $294 million for its stake, which will make it the largest shareholder in the mapping firm.

The two companies will also co-operate on future services, for instance making the physical location of sellers visible to buyers on Taobao, Alibaba’s eBay-like consumer marketplace.

Three months ago, Autonavi’s vice president Qie Jianjun said the mapping firm wanted to build its own online-to-offline gateway for traditional retailers, according to Techcrunch.

The company claims to have 116 million users of its free mobile mapping app.

The original story about the Alibaba investment was first reported by Sina Tech, a Chinese media outlet.