GUANGZHOU, China — Limitations between China’s tech rivals like Alibaba and Tencent are coming down as Chinese language corporations rush to adjust to Beijing’s crackdown on alleged monopolistic practices.
Cell pay took off within the final decade to grow to be the dominant type of client fee in mainland China, surpassing money and bank cards. Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alipay — run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Group — are the most well-liked, masking nearly all of the mainland inhabitants of 1.4 billion folks.
However fierce rivalry between the businesses meant that for years, customers shopping for merchandise on Alibaba’s Taobao e-commerce app might solely pay with Alipay. That is about to vary.
“As for payment, we also hope in the near future, in all places, users can freely choose. It’s also a show of fairness,” Lei Maofeng, vice-general supervisor of WeChat Pay, mentioned Wednesday at CNBC’s annual East Tech West convention within the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China. That is in keeping with a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.
He didn’t share a selected timeframe, and didn’t reply on to a query on whether or not WeChat Pay was in discussions with Alibaba.
Nevertheless, Lei identified that WeChat announced Monday that customers might now share hyperlinks from exterior websites, together with Taobao.
Beforehand, customers of WeChat — the ever present social messaging app in mainland China — couldn’t instantly share a hyperlink to a product on Alibaba-run Taobao. As a substitute, customers might solely copy and paste a jumble of keyboard symbols from a Taobao product web page into WeChat. Copying and pasting the identical mixture of symbols into Taobao would carry the consumer to the product web page.
A check by CNBC on Thursday discovered that the share operate on Taobao now allowed customers to ship a product web page hyperlink to WeChat — together with some promotional textual content.
WeChat is on the lookout for different methods to maintain customers engaged with its app past cellular pay and messaging. These capabilities embody robotically deducting a delivery fee as soon as a courier has retrieved a bundle for cargo, eliminating the necessity for the consumer to pay manually, Lei advised CNBC.
WeChat Pay involves some Alibaba apps
A number of Alibaba apps, together with meals supply app Ele.me and video platform Youku, have already started allowing WeChat Pay. Alipay was still the only payment option on Taobao and Tmall as of Thursday morning local time.
JD.com’s e-commerce app supported WeChat Pay, a domestic version of Apple Pay, and a number of Chinese credit cards as of Thursday morning. Tencent has a nearly 17% stake in JD, according to S&P Capital IQ.
Small business owners in China have complained in the past that an e-commerce site or food delivery app from one company would not allow them to operate simultaneously on another platform. Even if they managed to do so, the businesses might face higher fees.
Since late last year, the Chinese government has sought to limit alleged monopolistic practices by internet technology companies, notably by slapping a record $2.8 billion fine on Alibaba for such behavior.
