WeChat 5.0 presents a major threat to e-commerce rivals
Staff Reporter 2013-08-08 12:44
Screenshots of the latest version of WeChat. (Internet photo)
WeChat 5.0, the latest version of the popular messaging app developed by Chinese internet giant Tencent, finally hit the market on Aug. 5, threatening to steal a large market share from companies offering similar services, reports Guangzhou's 21st Century Business Herald.
One possible victim is Alipay, a leading third-party online payment platform owned by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Alipay reportedly plans to add a "public platform/account" function or micropayment function to the pocketbook of its mobile subscribers in order to ward off the commercialization of WeChat.
The iOS version of WeChat 5.0 features an online payment function, competing heads-on with Alipay. WeChat boasts a significant subscriber database with loyal users spending a lot of time online, but lacked a payment setting. Meanwhile, Alipay is able to take advantage of the payment settings of Taobao and Tmall, two e-commerce websites under Alibaba.
Insiders said that WeChat's micropayment option lacks sufficient display space for various materials, such as photos, descriptions, prices, and multilayer web pages, and cannot carry out online search. The new version, however, will affect the operations of e-commerce websites, since it can allow subscribers to access the websites of certain products simply by scanning the products with their mobile phones, thereby facilitating online shopping. It can even enable subscribers to tap information on certain stores, simply by scanning the landscape of the street they are on, the paper said.
On Aug. 1, Alibaba announced it would suspend subscriptions to WeChat-related applications on the service market, citing harassment of consumers by some vendors using WeChat. In response, Tencent said that the boycott is meaningless as WeChat now links up only with e-commerce websites under Tencent, without linkage to Tmall and Taobao under Alibaba.
WeChat 5.0 will also affect the operations of portal sites such as Baidu and the business of online translation firms, the latter of which due to WeChat's new scanning-based translation function, the 21st Century Business Herald said. As it continues to expand its business scope, Tencent will inevitably step into the turf of many other online companies and collect enemies along the way.
