Are you still in a tough spot if you leave your wallet at home? You should take a look at the daily life in China. Companies for example Alibaba are building an ecosystem around mobile payment, a huge number of businesses in China accept mobile payment and people prefer to pay by phone for everything! Scanning a QR code and inputting a password is everything people need to do for a purchase, and the transaction just takes a few seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnOFT5xvnM
Alipay was launched in 2004 as the Chinese equivalent of PayPal, but it has grown to a one-stop portal for payment solutions. Alipay is the leader in the mobile payment market, handling around 63.41% of all transactions in Q1 this year. However, WeChat, a social networking group with 762 million monthly active users in May 2016, offers more services than Alipay through WeChat groups (community building platform), which has become a big threat to Alipay.
After having failed to encourage users to build a social network outside of WeChat, Alipay turns to strangers. On April Fool’s Day of 2015, Alipay released a video (see below if you’re interested but only in Chinese) and “launched” Alipay Everywhere. Alipay believe that building the financial networks between people will be the future, as the development of Internet finance industry. Recently, it has confirmed that Alipay is going to launch Alipay Everywheree in a few weeks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0TUeyYsb1k
According to the video, you can get whatever they need within your budgets through Alipay Everywhere, such as need cash now and ask others for help to fix your laptop. Based on your request Alipay will analyse nearby users’ data (for instance consumption information and location information) to help you out. You will be given a list of respectable users and you can choose one to share your locations until the transaction is complete. It means everybody could be an “ATM” that can not only withdraw money but also offer any help to others. Alipay Everywhere will help to make connections between strangers and build communities. Moreover, users will be able to see rich people nearby who have large sum consumption record, and interact with them!
Do you think this Alipay Everywhere will help Alipay build a successful social network among strangers and make daily life easier and more convenient?
References:
http://ecommerceiq.asia/wechat-pay-launches-no-cash-day-china/https://www.techinasia.com/talk/online-payment-provider-alipay-chinese-equivalent-paypalhttp://expandedramblings.com/index.php/wechat-statistics/http://www.fintechasia.net/alipay-vs-wechat-war-of-chinese-payments/http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Blog-Shanghai_news/26270/This-years-top-China-April-Fools-pranks.html
