21st Century Business Herald reporter Bai Yang reports from Beijing
On September 4th, 21st Century Business Herald reporters learned that in order to enhance consumers' shopping experience, Taobao plans to add WeChat payment capabilities and gradually open them to all sellers on Taobao and Tmall platforms.
In response to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, WeChat Pay stated that the feature adaptation with Taobao platform merchants is currently being launched. Please refer to the Taobao platform announcement for the specific launch time. Previously, WeChat Pay has successively carried out payment interoperability cooperation with platforms including UnionPay Cloud QuickPass, JD Pay, payment platforms under the three major operators, and digital RMB. In the future, it will continue to explore and provide convenience for users on the basis of ensuring transaction security.
It is reported that this adjustment will cover all Taobao and Tmall merchants, and merchants can sign contracts according to their own business situation. In the future, consumers can use WeChat Pay to pay for orders in signed stores on Taobao and Tmall platforms according to their needs.
In the past few years, there have been constant calls for Taobao to integrate WeChat Pay, and Taobao has also made many attempts. For example, last year, Taobao first launched the payment method of "WeChat QR code payment". Although the operation was not convenient enough, it took at least one step forward.
At the beginning of this year, many netizens found that Taobao could choose WeChat Pay for payment when shopping. Subsequently, Taobao customer service stated that this feature is currently being tested and will only be gradually opened to some users, and only supports the option to purchase certain products.
Now, Taobao and WeChat Pay have finally been officially connected, which is not only what users have been looking forward to, but also a win-win result for both platforms.
In recent years, the e-commerce industry has undergone rapid changes, and after years of development, the Taobao system needs to innovate and seek change. By allowing WeChat Pay to be integrated, the Taobao platform can provide better services for merchants and users. Meanwhile, for WeChat Pay, as a national level payment tool, this cooperation can also help it further improve its service scenarios.
Large factories' demolition of walls'
In fact, the current interconnectivity means the previous closure. In the first ten years of the development of mobile Internet, commercial competition has gradually established a high barrier between various platform enterprises.
This situation was not promoted by an enterprise, but the Internet ecology at that time was the era of horse racing and land enclosure. Top platform enterprises all have certain advantageous resources and are in a period of rapid growth. At this time, consolidating advantages is the most important thing for each platform.
Over time, the gap between platforms gradually formed, which also created a sense of disconnection in the user experience.
In July 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched a six month special rectification action for the Internet industry, of which blocking website links is one of the key rectification issues. The spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said at that time that interconnection is an inevitable choice for the high-quality development of the Internet industry. It is also the direction that the Internet industry is striving to make users use the Internet smoothly and safely.
In September of the same year, WeChat announced that it would allow users to access external links in one-on-one chat scenarios. This means that external links, including Tiktok and Taobao, can be opened in WeChat one-on-one chat.
This adjustment of Tencent also sounded the call of "breaking down the wall" among Internet manufacturers. In the following years, various platforms also carried out a lot of interconnected cooperation.
For example, advertisements on Taobao and Tmall have already entered WeChat Moments; Xianyu has launched a WeChat mini program; DingTalk Meeting can be opened directly through WeChat. In addition, Alibaba's Elema, Youku, barley and other applications have taken the lead in accessing the WeChat payment function, and Tencent games are also fully open to Tiktok Live.
In terms of mobile payments, WeChat Pay is gradually integrating with more platforms. As early as 2021, WeChat Pay integrated with UnionPay Cloud QuickPass; Last November, WeChat Pay completed interconnection with barcode payment platforms under the three major telecom operators, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom; In May of this year, WeChat Pay and JD Pay achieved interconnectivity.
Seeking the greatest common divisor
Compared to some previous collaborations, the connection between Taobao and WeChat Pay this time has greater significance. Because this is the true advantage resource of Alibaba and Tencent's two leading platform companies, and the cooperation is not only about formal connectivity, but also will have a substantial promoting effect on the business of both parties.
In the current Internet environment, this is also an incremental market that all parties urgently need.
In the past few years, with the peak of Internet traffic dividend, the entire market has entered the era of stock competition. In this context, major Internet enterprises have begun to reduce costs and increase efficiency, turning from expansion growth to contraction growth in the past.
This is most evident in Tencent's financial report. In the second quarter of this year, Tencent's revenue was 161.117 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8%, but gross profit increased by 21% year-on-year to 85.895 billion yuan, and net profit (Non IFRS) increased by 53% year-on-year to 57.313 billion yuan.
The growth of Tencent's profitability is due to the improvement of operational efficiency, and its overall revenue growth rate has remained in single digits for several consecutive quarters.
Compared to Tencent, Alibaba faces more intense competition in the e-commerce industry and more obvious growth pressure. In the second quarter of this year, Alibaba's revenue increased by 4% year-on-year to 243.236 billion yuan, and its net profit (Non GAAP) was 40.69 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 9.4%.
For Alibaba, e-commerce and cloud are currently its two core businesses. Among them, regarding the e-commerce business, Alibaba's management stated that they will focus on improving user experience through good goods, good prices, and good services, driving Taobao Group to stabilize market share, and returning the business to the growth track
Through the cooperation between Taobao and WeChat Pay, Tencent and Alibaba will complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, driving their respective businesses to achieve new growth.
For WeChat Pay, Taobao is a huge consumer scenario, which will help drive further growth in its payment business. For Taobao, WeChat Pay not only provides merchants and users with more choices, but also helps to increase the stickiness of the group who are accustomed to using WeChat Pay to Taobao.
According to market data, WeChat Pay has a high penetration rate in third - and fourth tier cities, so Taobao's integration of WeChat Pay can help attract this group of users and promote consumption in the lower tier markets. In addition, there are also some users in the market who do not have bank cards or mainly use WeChat for fund management. The cooperation between Taobao and WeChat Pay can also increase Taobao's attractiveness to these users.
So next, each platform will seek the greatest common denominator between each other to jointly promote business growth, which may become a new normal for the development of the Internet industry. This is a good thing for the platform, users, and even the entire Internet ecosystem.
However, some industry experts have issued a reminder that cooperation in interconnectivity still needs to be based on security as the bottom line. He said that, based on the open principle of the Internet, any platform can choose which tools and services to access independently. But there is a complex multidimensional relationship between platforms, merchants, users, and tools, which is both mutual selection and multiple selection.
"Mobile Internet has developed rapidly in recent years, while risks such as electronic fraud and online fraud are also constantly occurring. From the perspective of continuing to promote connectivity, we should still take security compliance and properly protect users' rights and interests as the premise, explore ways to help the industry and serve users' openness, rather than opening up and bringing unnecessary risks," said the expert.