![]() With a small team, TechNode provides timely news and thoughtfully researched articles for worldwide readers interested in learning more about the Chinese tech industry. Microlending took off in 2016, and is particularly popular among China’s younger consumers: more than half (in Chinese) borrow money to finance their daily consumption.WeChat Pay rival Alipay has been expanding its cross-border partnerships and broadening its financial services ecosystem in collaboration with other user-rich platforms.Instead, interest rates drop whenever money is paid back.Ĭontext: In Q4, Tencent reported fintech and business service revenue of RMB 29.9 billion (around $4.2 billion), growth of 39% year on year, accounting for 28% of total revenues for the quarter.Fen Fu has no fixed interest rates nor payment due dates-differing from other installment payment products.Users will pay a daily interest on money borrowed and can repay the full amount at any time.They can directly select Fen Fu as an option when paying. When paying, users do not have to withdraw credit in advance.WeChat users via a remote server hosted by Chinese Internet provider Tencent. Users can rely on Fen Fu to pay for eating out, shopping, and watching movies but cannot use it to send payments to other WeChat users. Chinese social media giant WeChat is screening documents and images shared.Tencent’s gains in fintech show that the competition to serve all user needs will only heat up.ĭetails: Announced last year, large numbers of users had access to the Fen Fu function as of last week (in Chinese). ![]() In recent months, Meituan and Alipay have set out their long-term strategy of providing comprehensive digital lifestyle services, fully integrated into their existing apps.This rollout shows Tencent’s strategy in building a digital ecosystem in which users have easy access to financial services within the WeChat app itself.Why it matters: Fenfu is Tencent’s foray into microloans, a service which Alipay offers users with its Huabei feature, and JD.com with its Baitiao product. Walmart, for its part, has its own branded (and very popular) mobile payment system here, though it may not be out of the question to see Walmart accept one or both major Chinese payment platforms here at some point in the future if demand builds.Ĭhina, meanwhile, has established the model for a cashless society that every other country and payments platform right now can only aspire to, and the competition between the top two platforms in the region is heating up.Chinese gaming and social giant Tencent has rolled out “Fen Fu,” an embedded credit feature which allows its 1.1 billion WeChat users to “buy now and pay later.” Right now, it’s difficult to look down the road and see how either platform might flourish in the U.S., as the region remains an embryonic market for mobile payments, and a crowded one. Those initial moves target Chinese tourists traveling abroad, but could also very well be the beginning of the next phase of competition between two payments giants. Both platforms have made a concerted effort to expand into North America, for example. However, it’s also true that overseas endeavors are becoming increasingly important to Alipay and WeChat Pay. The size and significance of China’s payments market far outweighs that of any other market around the world. Potentially more intriguing, it could be aligning even more deeply with a group of Chinese partners-Tencent, WeChat and JD.com - that all have begun to understand that the best way to challenge Alibaba is with a team effort.įor now, these relationships and their effects are unfolding only in China, which offers plenty to keep all parties happy. Walmart may be acting strategically on its own, adopting WeChat Pay in a region where it feels it makes the most sense, while keeping its future payment options throughout China open. Walmart also recently has started to share data and intertwine its loyalty program for Chinese customers with that of JD.com, and JD.com also has been more closely aligning with WeChat on data sharing and other efforts. Both Walmart and Tencent are investors in JD.com, the company that also happens to be Alibaba’s biggest e-commerce rival in China. This looks like a pretty big blow to Alipay, which has been giving up mobile payments market share in China to WeChat, even though the former has been in use for several years and the latter only since 2016.īut, perhaps it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Walmart went with WeChat, as the U.S.-based retail giant already has pretty close ties with WeChat owner Tencent in China.
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