“Alipay is China’s most popular online payment system used for online purchases including Taobao orders, paying utility bills, movie tickets, and other shopping sites,” Scott Cendrowski reports for Fortune. “Apple’s new Apple Pay, meanwhile, is a mostly physical experience. You forgo the hassle of swiping a credit card at the cash register for the ease of touching the iPhone’s home button at two hundred thousand locations that have signed on with Apple. Yes, it has an online component that makes online shopping easier, but its allure is the physical component, just as Alipay’s allure is online.”
“So when Ma brought up a partnership, it wasn’t clear what Alipay could offer Apple in China: it doesn’t have payment installations across the country,” Cendrowski reports. “But Jack Ma doesn’t choose his words lightly. What he says carry weight even if it is difficult to understand. Just two days after he spoke on a stage with Tim Cook in the audience, China’s government announced a massive change to the payments system that supported Ma’s idea of a partnership.”
“Jack Ma is known for staying a step or two ahead of the government without creating feuds. The way he sidestepped UnionPay’s monopoly in the mid-2000s by setting up Alipay’s online system with 200 banks is one example,” Cendrowski reports. “Teaming up with Apple Pay looks like another.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Alibaba’s Jack Ma says open to working with Apple on Apple Pay – October 28, 2014
Tim Cook blasts CVS, Rite Aid over Apple Pay blockade: ‘You only are relevant if your customers love you’ – October 28, 2014
Seeking personal data, Walmart, Best Buy, and others won’t let shoppers enjoy Apple Pay privacy – October 27, 2014
Boycott CVS and Rite Aid – October 27, 2014
Bad business: CVS and Rite Aid antagonize their most well-heeled customers by blocking Apple Pay – October 27, 2014
CVS stores reportedly disabling NFC to shut down Apple Pay – October 25, 2014
iPhone users earn significantly more than those who settle for Android phones – October 8, 2014
Yet more proof that Android is for poor people – June 27, 2014
More proof that Android is for poor people – May 13, 2014
Apple’s iOS dominates in richer countries, Android in poorer regions – March 25, 2014
Twitter heat map shows iPhone use by the affluent, Android by the poor – June 20, 2013
iPhone users smarter, richer than Android phone users – August 16, 2011
Yankee Group: Apple iPhone owners shop more, buy more, remain more loyal vs. other device users – July 20, 2010
See article in “Seeking Alpha”: Apple Pay Vastly Better Positioned than MCX.
I wonder how many bureaucrats were paid off in the last two days.
I hear what your saying, and if payoffs are on the table, wouldn’t you think they would be “on” under the table in the US too? I understand its not legal to pay for favors, but willingness on one hand in a nation, would seem to indicate willingness in another, especially when the hand is just sitting there with palms up, by any politically connected person with a power role. The US is for sale and open for business.
Our impression is that Apple does not grease the wheels and that’s why they get flack, at home. So I just don’t understand how this would be any different in China.
Playoffs? I suppose… 🙂
I meant cash payments for favors.
Look, Ma, no hands!
Exciting…