I have worked hard to choose a lot of things. When I checked out at the checkout counter, I found that I couldn't pay for it with Alipay. '-- such an embarrassing situation happened in a large supermarket like Wal Mart. What kind of love hate entanglement is hidden behind this? Let's take a look at it with sihai.com.
'it's a business decision.'. Experts say such a decision could hurt consumer welfare. However, in the view of the insiders, the competition and cooperation relationship of Tencent Department of Wal Mart is very normal, not only Wal Mart, but also offline high-frequency payment scenarios such as bicycle and taxi are the commanding points for Alibaba department and Tencent department.
WAL-MART stores temporarily suspend Alipay
A consumer from Chongqing said that when he was spending at WAL-MART local supermarket, he was told that the payment method had changed. Alipay was suspended, using mobile payment only to support WeChat's payment.
A "public notice" from WAL-MART Asia Pacific store in Chengdu shows that since March 15, 2018, the way of payment is: WeChat payment, UnionPay card, credit card, prepaid card, cash (suspension of Alipay). At the same time, in order to give back to consumers, wechat payment full reduction activity will be launched from March 15 to April 1, 2018. Please refer to the in store announcement for details of the activity at that time. In addition, wechat payment with a maximum reduction of 20 yuan is posted everywhere in the store.
Since then, many consumers have reported that WAL-MART in their own city has claimed that Alipay has been suspended. Some of them are on the grounds of 'system upgrade', and others are on the grounds of 'cooperative suspension', and indicate that the recovery time is unknown.
Users have said that Alipay can not be used to pay to some extent, causing inconvenience to themselves. Some users said that they usually used Alipay, WeChat wallet, no money, after shopping in the supermarket was told that Alipay can not be used, "I had to Alipay at the scene, and then transferred to WeChat wallet." Others said: 'now I go out to get a mobile phone. I can't choose. It's not very good. '
Wal Mart is called a business decision
WAL-MART said that since March 15, 2018, WAL-MART has temporarily stopped accepting Alipay payment in West China (including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing). This is a commercial decision. WAL-MART has reviewed the business from time to time.
According to Wal Mart's official introduction, Huaxi District is one of Wal Mart's five operation areas. Currently, Wal Mart has more than 90 stores in Huaxi District. Wal Mart China said in a notice that since March 15, 2018, Wal Mart West China and wechat have reached an in-depth partnership, will launch exclusive offers, and conduct more precision marketing cooperation based on big data analysis.
WAL-MART said that in addition to West China, cooperation between other regional stores and Alipay was temporarily normal.
Some Alipay supermarkets in Hunan also shut down Alipay.
In addition to WAL-MART, consumers in the Hunan area say that the local BBK supermarket has suspended Alipay for some time. Users in Changsha, Yueyang, Shaoyang, Xiangtan, Zhuzhou, Liling and other places indicated that BBK supermarkets in their locality were not allowed to use Alipay. Many consumers Tucao said:
BBK didn't even use Alipay. It really surprised me. After a lot of hard work, I couldn't pay. '
'BBK in Zhuzhou's East can't use Alipay! Pancake fruit can be used in the age of Alipay. '
According to the data, Bubugao's current chain stores are mainly located in Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guangxi and other provinces, mainly in West China and central China, and partially overlap with Wal Mart's West China.
BBK's responsible person responded to the question of 'stop Alipay':
'the prohibition of the use of Alipay is not accurate. BBK had only a few stores to test Alipay in the past, not all stores, but there are still stores and stores still using Alipay. At the same time, Alipay's cooperation is too strong. It only serves as a first-class entry. It does not accept two-way access. We can not accept such unfair cooperation. '
Why disable Alipay?
Traditional business supermen standing in line
Whether WAL-MART or BBK, the ban on the use of Alipay, can only be paid by WeChat. In the final analysis, it is still the interests of choice, but the interests of the alliance.
Let's see Wal Mart first. In June 2016, Wal Mart and Jingdong announced that they had reached in-depth strategic cooperation, which was attributed to Tencent, the leader of Jingdong.
Wal Mart and Jingdong belong to strategic cooperation. In June 2016, Wal Mart merged into Jingdong with its "No.1 store" and obtained about 5% shares of Jingdong. Subsequently, Wal Mart increased its shares to 10%. Tencent owns the most shares of JD, about 17.8%; Liu qiangdong is the second largest shareholder of JD; Wal Mart is the third largest shareholder of JD. Visible Tencent, Jingdong, WAL-MART three is a front line, after Jingdong refused to use Alipay, WAL-MART is further follow-up refused to use Alipay.
Let's look at the step height. In February 2018, Tencent joined hands with Jingdong to acquire more than 1.6 billion yuan of shares.
Such a situation makes people wonder whether Tencent's inspiration is behind the coincidence, or whether the younger brothers are trying to "contribute" to the elder brother.
Tencent response
Zhang Jun, Tencent's PR Director, responded to the incident on Weibo:
In fact, any third-party mobile payment is still in the process of communicating and promoting access with businesses. The initiative of access is basically in the hands of businesses. For businesses, third-party payment is only an option, not a required option.
How to choose, businesses will have their own considerations. Any third-party payment tool is only a participant and facilitator of retail reform, not a leader, so there is no ability or possibility to interfere with businesses. What wechat payment needs to do is to provide a series of digital tools for merchants, not to obtain merchant data, respect commercial privacy, so as to obtain the trust and recognition of partners.
In Tencent and Alibaba's competitive payment market, wechat payment has carried out exclusive cooperation, and the situation that partners are prohibited from entering has appeared before. According to a weekly magazine, Alipay paid 9 months later than WeChat to fully access Starbucks, possibly because WeChat and Starbucks had reached a 6 month 'exclusive agreement'.
Behind the ban: Tencent collects and arranges retail enterprises to seize the payment entrance
In the past year, Tencent has been heavily engaged in retail sales for a year. When the Alipay incident was on the Internet, Ma Huateng was decrypted at the China IT leaders summit. '
In 2016, Ma Yun took the lead in proposing a new retail strategy and began to lay out the layout. He has successively invested in retail enterprises such as Yintai, Sanjiang shopping, Lianhua supermarket, xinhuadu supermarket, Lianhua supermarket, Gaoxin retail RT mart, etc. In the layout of new retail, Alibaba has a fast start and obvious advantages.
Alibaba's new retail layout has aroused Tencent's vigilance.
At the end of 2017, Tencent, China's largest social platform, suddenly began to buy and buy intensively in the retail field, frequently related to retail. Within two months, Tencent invested in Yonghui supermarket, super species, daily excellent and fresh convenience shopping, vipshop, Carrefour China, Wanda business, Hailan home, step by step.
After seeing the rise of new retail, Tencent suddenly stepped into the retail field and began to put more money in the retail field. On the one hand, Tencent defended the momentum of its rivals in the new retail field.
On the other hand, it will lead the traffic to the retail field for commercialization and realization, and turn the massive traffic such as wechat and QQ into white money. At the same time, it will seize the online and offline business scene and entrance of wechat payment.
This can also be confirmed by Tencent's official statement on investment in retail enterprises. For example, when Tencent Jingdong co invested in vipshop, Liu Zhiping, Tencent president, said, "Tencent expects to help vipshop provide brand clothing and other product categories for China's rising middle class by means of user traffic, marketing and payment programs. '
Tencent invest in BBK, BBK uses small programs and public numbers as the carrier tools to build WeChat inner mall as BBK's main online business platform, giving full play to Tencent's social traffic and scene advantages.
In the 3 quarter of 2017, the third party payment mobile payment market share data released by Analysys showed that in the third quarter of 2017, Alipay's market share was 53.73%, an increase of 3.3 percentage points compared to the same period last year, and the market share of CAI Fu Tong (including WeChat payment) was 39.35%, up 1.23 percentage points from the same period last year.
That is to say, in the field of mobile payment, the rivals whose volume is larger than yours are growing at twice the speed. According to Tencent's recent financial report, at present, the number of wechat users is 900 million, almost close to the ceiling, while the distribution of wechat red packets is still declining... How can we fight this? According to expert analysis: 'there is no other way than increasing and seizing all kinds of entity payment scenarios. '
In fact, Tencent does the same. Since this year alone, Tencent has invested in Yonghui, Wanda and Hailan's home for more than 10 billion yuan, and signed a letter of intent for investment in Carrefour China with Yonghui, so as to reach strategic cooperation with Bubugao.
In fact, the offline investment is to buy one payment scenario after another with money. However, Alibaba, who is good at retailing, also blooms online and offline. Perhaps, it's not enough to just "flag" cloth. It's almost certain that the exclusiveness of mobile payment is a multi lose situation, and the users who are forced to stand in line will backfire their anger.
At the 2018 China (Shenzhen) it leaders summit recently, Ma Huateng introduced Tencent's strategic layout and intention in the field of smart retail in detail.
When referring to smart retail, Ma Huateng pointed out that Tencent does not do retail, but only does connector and provides underlying technical support, including cloud and AI. Tencent focuses on the connection between wechat users and offline users. "We hope that wechat users can connect with more and more offline services. As long as they can connect well, this is my biggest goal. '
'it doesn't feel like Tencent's style. In recent years, Tencent is generally moderate. 'some in the industry commented. However, Tencent's such abnormality may explain: 'first, the previous gentlemanly demeanor may be due to the lack of pressure from its rivals, and its main business has not received a real threat. Second, in the new retail business, Tencent's team may not have the strength to do so, so it will make such a decision. '
In 2011, during the battle of 3q, users were forced to do a similar "one out of two" question. Tencent confronted 360 for three years and finally won the lawsuit, but lost the public opinion.
I don't know what to do with Ma Huateng this time. Ma Yun can fight back, but in that case, he will fight Tencent directly. Such a fight is not good for both sides. Not good for consumers.
Do you think Ma Yun will call back?