Apple (AAPL) and Alibaba (BABA). This would seem like a match made in heaven.

Tim Cook's Apple Pay aspires to become the defacto standard for mobile payments, while Jack Ma's Alibaba.com aspires to become the defacto standard for on-line commerce in China.

Jack Ma needs something more user friendly and more secure in a country where fraud is only too common. Tim Cook, on the other hand, needs a stronger foothold in the worlds largest growing consumer base.

The two CEO's indicated a possible partnership during the WSJ Digital conference in Laguna Beach, California.

Tim said of Ma, “If we can find some areas of common space, I love it. I love partnering with people like that.” Cook ended his talk by saying he and Ma would probably talk sometime this week about maybe getting together.

Ma had hinted earlier that he was, “very interested in something like that,” when referring to a possible partnership with Apple’s newly unveiled mobile payment system.

Alibaba already features a Paypal-like service called AliPay, which handled over $200 billion in payments worldwide this last year, with about 800 million users accounting for 70% of online transactions in China.

In comparison, PayPal processed a mere $180 billion in 2013.

“Alipay is now the third largest payment system in the world, behind Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA)” Ma Said.