Alipay to open up platform to 40 million service providers in China

Alipay, the mobile payment service operated by Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services, announced it will open up its platform to 40 million service providers to become a one-stop platform for various digital services.

The move marks a positional shift for the company, which has previously been focused on providing financial services.

Ant Financial CEO Simon Hu / Photo credit: Ant Financial

To help users cope with the impact of Covid-19, Alipay said it introduced an incentive program that lets developers create mini programs on the platform. Within a week, it saw over 1,200 developers respond and 181 mini programs created, according to a statement. The services include grocery delivery, legal and medical consultation, and logistics, among others.

According to Alipay, consumer demand for digital services has been growing rapidly, with searches for lifestyle services on the Alipay app increasing by 300% in 2019 alone.

To carry out the initiative, Alipay will update its platform to let service providers tap into traffic within the Alipay app. In addition, service providers will be able to leverage Alipay mini programs, which can run on all major platforms within the Alibaba ecosystem such as Tmall and AutoNavi, to reach a broader audience.

Under the three-year plan, Alipay will also work with 50,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) to support service providers, increase efficiencies, and help them reach more customers by 2030. ISVs are companies that package Alipay’s technologies into solutions to meet the needs of specific industries, including consumer retail, food and beverage, hospitality, transportation, and medical services.

Alipay added support for mini programs in September 2017 to make it easier for third-party services to join the app’s ecosystem. It looked to take on WeChat’s own instant apps, which it launched earlier in January 2017.