The Big Picture

Alipay opens its platform to speed up digitalization of Chinese service providers amid Covid-19

  • China
  • 5 min read
  • Apr 15, 2020
  • By Wang Xiao'e

© Alibaba

As Alipay continues to battle WeChat for super-app supremacy, it's created a stronghold in China’s services industry, where 80% of businesses still operate under brick-and-mortar models

On March 10, Ant Financial, the affiliate fintech company of Alibaba, announced the upgrading of its Alipay online payment solution to an open platform for lifestyle services. It also set the goal of helping 40m merchants to go digital with support from 50,000 independent software vendors in the coming three years. 
The upgrade has been brewing for a long time. Started as a platform for financial services only in 2004, Alipay made its intention of expanding beyond its financial services focus very clear through an ad aired on China’s Central Television with the theme of “Good Life, Ali...

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Edited by John Gee

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