Apple now accepts Alipay at physical stores in China
Apple will allow payments with Alipay in all its 41 stores in mainland China, Financial Times reported. The partnership between the manufacturer and the Alibaba affiliate marks the first time a third-party mobile payment platform makes its way in any of the 500 Apple stores globally.
Apple sold 41.1 million smartphones in China in 2017 and generated net sales of $44.7 billion, but still struggles to to push its own Apple Pay platform. Alipay, on the other hand, is a market leader in China, where along with its rival WeixinPay accounts for $11.4 trillion of payments in 2016.
Eyeing to outperform its competitor and to offer an IPO, Ant Financial, the parent company of Alipay and subsidiary of Alibaba, is aggressively recruiting physical stores to sign up to its platform. The virtual wallet is already used for payments in the App Store and iTunes, therefore a change in market positions is unclear, FT predicts.
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Reader comments
- FromChinaWithLove
- 08 Feb 2018
- Ibx
Well, that's the problem here in America. Peoples are so hardheaded that sometimes(or most of the time) they don't easily accept new thing(s). From cash to check to credit card and we're still here with credit card, and the worries of this and ...
- AnonD-598916
- 07 Feb 2018
- gKJ
While what you say is true, you do have to consider that US and EU citizens have much more concerns over their privacy (whether founded or unfounded) in regard and are distrustful of techinological innovations in general, much more so than the Chines...
- FromChinaWithLove
- 07 Feb 2018
- Ibx
As a Chinese living in America, I felt that we are falling so far behind in digital payment method ( in general). Yes, ApplePay may had made the Western Society started to move forward with digital payment method ( I mean that there was other who alr...