HANGZHOU - Alibaba, China's top online retailer, started Monday to request users of its China site to register their real names, saying that they would be unable to trade via the website from Friday if they did not.

The e-commerce giant issued an online notice saying real-name registration would be one of a series of steps the company would make towards building its website into an honest and fair trading platform.

The company's chief executive officer David Wei and chief operating officer Elvis Lee resigned in February, after accepting responsibility for allowing more than 1,000 suppliers to defraud online customers.

Subsequently, Alibaba has made efforts to clean up its online trading environment, including stepping up monitoring of suppliers and providing awards for honest traders.

Alibaba which is based in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, is 43 percent-owned by US Internet giant Yahoo!