Jingdong Picks Up E-Banking Domain, Moving Towards New Online Payment Platform?

Chinese e-commerce giant 360Buy — which I suppose I ought to be calling Jingdong now — quietly picked up the domain wangyin.com on Friday. That may not mean anything to you if you don’t speak Chinese, but it’s the pinyin romanization for the term “online banking” in Chinese, and as such, it sends a pretty clear message about what Jingdong is planning to do with the domain.

Last year, the company acquired the third-party payment company Online Banking, so it seems pretty probable that this domain is meant for that team. But insiders also have said that the company is working on its own payment platform, so it’s possible the domain will also be used for that in addition to whatever the Online Banking team will be doing with it. Or perhaps Online Banking’s services will be merged into the new platform.

So we’ll have to wait and see to find out exactly what Jingdong does with its shiny new domain name, but it’s pretty clear it’s going to have something to do with e-payments. Could it pose a threat to Alibaba’s Alipay?

(via TechWeb)