Alipay Wallet Moves In On City Service Payments

Alibaba’s affiliate mobile wallet Alipay has launched a new service that allows users to pay municipal fees in 12 Chinese cities, Tech In Asia reported Wednesday (April 22).

This marks the latest round in the ongoing battle between China’s tech giants to try to gain control of one of the world’s fastest growing mobile payments markets.

Last January, chat service WePay — backed by Alibaba’s mobile rival Tencent — rolled out an extremely similar feature set vis-a-vis municipal payments.

To use the Alibaba version, users can click on a new “City Services” tab inside their Alibaba Wallet that pulls up a menu. That menu that gives consumers the option of booking medical appointments, paying parking tickets, buying gas or settling utility bill. The service set also allows users to look up traffic information and public transportation schedules as well as manage various bureaucratic tasks.

Though the service has gotten off the ground in a dozen cities to start, Ant Financial – the Alibaba affiliate that technically owns Alipay – says it intends to continue that rollout to 50 Chinese cities by the end of 2015.
Though these services are not themselves revenue generators for either Alibaba or Tencent – both firms are pursuing an investment into a consumer base that has become so habituated to mobile payments that they are more easily steered to those products and services that are revenue generators for both firms. In Alibaba’s case, the obvious path is toward it’s eCommerce empire on sites like Taobao and Tmall.