| In recent years China has been moving towards a cashless society. This has been made possible by two smart payment giants: WeChat Pay and Alipay. That’s why we’re going to take a closer look at WeChat Pay and Alipay to see what the difference between the two actually is.  Quick Introduction WeChat Pay was developed as an additional feature within China’s must have instant messaging and social media app WeChat. In Chinese WeChat pay is 微信支付 (wēi xìn zhī fù). WeChat started as a chat app when it was launched in 2011, but has now become much more than that. In 2013 WeChat’s virtual wallet payment system WeChat Pay (also referred to as TenPay) was introduced. Although WeChat Pay is much newer than its main competitor Alipay, its already huge user base has enabled it to quickly become dominant in the market. Alipay is owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba. Alipay in Chinese is 支付宝 (zhī fù bǎo). It was first introduced in 2003 as an online digital payments solution for the Alibaba website. In 2008, Alipay officially introduced its mobile e-wallet and has become a regular payment facility that services not only Alibaba products. Before WeChat Pay was introduced Alipay completely dominated the smart and mobile payment market within China. What’s the Difference? The main difference between WeChat Pay and Alipay is that WeChat Pay is an in-app feature of the social media app WeChat whereas Alipay is a dedicated smart and mobile payment system. This means that although both systems can be used for similar things the focus of them is slightly different. WeChat Pay is more of a social app used by most users to navigate their daily life. Popular uses are purchasing groceries, paying bills, transferring money to friends, sending red envelopes and other everyday transactions. Alipay on the other hand puts more emphasis on e-commerce payment and financial services. As Alipay was originally created as a payment platform for the Alibaba website, it has become more of an escrow payment service. With more supported currencies and a much higher limit for withdrawals, Alipay is more focused towards ecommerce and business. |
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