Apple’s alliance with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba may help them avoid regulatory delays in China while they work to bring their Apple Pay mobile payment solution to the Chinese market.
Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai gave some insight on his company’s talks with Apple in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Monday. In it, Tsai said discussions are progressing with the involvement of Ant Financial, the company within Alibaba that manages its Alipay payment service.
If people want to use Apple Pay in China, Apple would have certain restrictions and limitations on operating payment businesses in China,” Tsai said. “So we are thinking whether there is any opportunity for us to work together where Apple Pay and Alipay can somehow work together in China.”
The executive also noted that it would be an “obvious possibility” for Apple Pay to utilize Alipay’s back-end to process payments, which would allow users of Alipay to make payments from their account in retail stores. Alipay is currently a mostly online payments service.
It was confirmed earlier this month that Alibaba is in negotiations with Apple, discussing a possible partnership between Apple Pay and Alipay. The Alipay service currently relies on clunky QR Codes for payment at retail. (Hello CurrentC! – Ed.)
A partnership between the two is seen as being advantageous to both companies.
The Alibaba e-commerce firm was founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the wealthiest man in China. The company’s Alibaba online payment service is the largest in China, while its Taobao website is China’s answer to eBay.
