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on the afternoon of september 4,taobao has released the "solicitation of opinions on adding wechat payment capabilities to taobao," and it is expected that wechat payment will be fully integrated by the end of this month.

taotian responded that taobao and tmall have always adhered to the concept of open cooperation, actively explored mutual cooperation with various platforms, continuously improved consumers' shopping experience, and made consumers' shopping more convenient, enjoyable and efficient.

wechat pay responded by saying:currently, the function adaptation with taobao platform merchants is being opened.please pay attention to the taobao platform announcement for the specific launch time. wechat pay has always adhered to the concept of open cooperation and actively explored interoperability and cooperation with various fields.

according to 36kr, taobao's integration with wechat pay is a confidential project within taobao, and preparations began half a year ago. at that time, some users noticed that taobao began to test wechat pay on a small scale, but the platform did not make any statement on this.

according to latepost, taobao will sign contracts with all merchants for the newly added wechat pay, and it is expected to be completed and fully launched by the end of september.

taobao previously used alipay as its core payment tool, and tencent's wechat pay was excluded. it was not until the second half of 2021 that the two giants started to interconnect and move towards each other under external pressure.one of the focuses is open payment scenarios.

in february 2022, taobao launched the internal testing of wechat pay. when shopping on taobao, some users can choose to "pay by scanning the qr code on wechat" and "find a friend on wechat to pay for me" in addition to using alipay.

in february this year, news of taobao's small-scale testing of wechat pay spread like wildfire. taobao responded at the time that the function was open to some users and some products, and would gradually cover all users in the future.

now, the shoe has finally dropped. alipay responded that openness, collaboration, innovation and sharing are the basic spirit of the internet and the general trend of industry development. alipay will continue to deepen strategic cooperation with taotian group, increase technological innovation and product innovation, and continue to create greater value for merchants and consumers.

previously,meituan, which is held by tencent, has already entered alipay in a big way.

zizibang (id: wujicaijing) noted that since last year, meituan's food delivery, hotel, cycling, power bank, medicine purchase, errand running and other businesses have opened alipay mini programs, of which food delivery has been used by more than 1 million people, and cycling and power bank have been used by more than 4 million people. meituan's group purchase alipay mini program will also be launched soon.

with taobao's integration into wechat pay, alibaba and tencent have finally taken a big step forward after three years of working together.

it is worth noting that on august 30, the state administration for market regulation announced on its official website thatthe department supervised alibaba group holding ltd. to complete three years of rectification.

alibaba later responded, "for alibaba, this is a new starting point for development. in the future, we will continue to focus on innovation, adhere to compliant operations, increase investment in technology, promote the healthy development of the platform economy, and create more value for society."

since 2013, alibaba and tencent have been blocking each other in an escalating confrontation. in particular, wechat strictly controls e-commerce external links, resulting in online shopping users being forced to copy and paste taobao passwords that sound like "martian language" and struggling to move around in the ecological cage of the two giants; and wechat payment being blocked by taobao also makes many users feel inconvenienced.

in the wave of interconnection in the second half of 2021, alibaba and tencent's main businesses are "quiet and peaceful", and they lack the motivation to open their arms to their old rivals. the need for both parties to break down barriers and exchange resources is not as urgent as it is today. but three years later, both giants are facing more challenges;we will once again promote interconnection and seek growth from each other's strengths.become the common choice of alibaba and tencent.

according to 36kr, taobao is the more active party in promoting the wechat payment project.by increasing payment channels and reaching the long-tail population,this is the key consideration for taobao to proactively extend an olive branch.

currently, alibaba’s e-commerce business is still in the recovery period after emerging from the price war and unilateral “refund only” quagmire, and needs to find more growth drivers.

judging from the financial report, in the second quarter of this year, the performance of alibaba's core taobao group has rebounded: the number of buyers and purchase frequency have both increased, and the order volume has achieved double-digit growth year-on-year; the number of 88vip members has increased by double digits year-on-year, exceeding 42 million.

but,alibaba's e-commerce revenue declined year-on-year and the group's net profit also shrank.in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (the second quarter of natural year 2024), alibaba group's revenue increased by 4% year-on-year, of which taobao group's revenue decreased by 1% year-on-year; net profit decreased by 27% year-on-year; not in accordance with us generally accepted accounting principles, net profit decreased by 9% year-on-year.

if alibaba wants to return to faster growth, introducing more consumers from outside the ecosystem is one of the basic actions.the increase mainly exists in the sinking market.this has also been alibaba’s strategic focus in recent years.

alibaba had previously pinned its hopes on taobao special, which was to be launched in may 2021. in the same track as pinduoduo, taobao special still achieved more than 240 million annual active consumers 18 months after its launch, with an increase of more than 40 million for three consecutive quarters.

however, due to long-term losses, a high degree of user overlap with taobao, and major changes at the alibaba group level, taobao's development in the past two years has not been ideal, and the group's attention has also declined.

at the end of february this year, some media reported that taobao merchants and products were moving back to taobao, and that the main base of merchants would also be transferred to taobao in the future; taobao immediately denied it, saying that the business would continue to develop and at the same time increase the full supply of taobao mobile to serve taobao's original market users.

although taobao special has not been "killed", alibaba has not achieved its strategic goal of finding a new growth curve through taobao special. if alibaba wants to fight in the sinking market again, in addition to adjusting its own business layout, it also needs to find new helpers.

according to data released by wechat in 2020, wechat pay is the preferred payment method in counties (83%) and towns (78%), both higher than the 76% of urban users. this may be because wechat pay is strong in offline payment scenarios, such as dining in restaurants and shopping in convenience stores, and such scenarios account for a higher proportion of consumption among users in the sinking market.after taobao is connected to wechat pay, it can reduce the situation where users are blocked due to not using alipay, thereby reaching more new users in lower-tier cities.

on the other hand, tencent also needs to find more users and orders for wechat pay.

although wechat pay has a huge number of users, its recent revenue growth is not very fast. in the second quarter of this year, among tencent's three major business segments, the financial technology and enterprise service revenue with wechat pay as the core increased by 4% year-on-year, lagging behind the 6% of value-added services with mobile games as the core, and the 19.5% of online advertising.

tencent disclosed in a conference call that the number of payment transactions continued to grow at a double-digit percentage, but the average transaction amount declined.integrating wechat pay into taobao e-commerce will help tencent acquire more high-value consumers.increase transaction volume, thereby driving the growth of the entire fintech sector.

before taobao supported wechat pay, alibaba and tencent were already flirting with each other.

the changes first occurred in the marginal areas of alibaba.in 2021, alibaba apps such as ele.me, youku, damai, kaola.com, and shuqi.com were connected to wechat pay. at that time, alibaba responded that it hoped to "face the future together with other platforms and move forward in the same direction."

taobao also launched the "wechat scan code payment" project. wang hai, vice president of alibaba group, said at the time that taobao launched the wechat scan code payment project in the context of the slow progress of direct connection to wechat payment.

"before the two systems are interconnected, we will first use the qr code scanning method to complete the payment. even if this transitional method only exists for a few weeks or days, we hope that the direct connection to wechat pay will not take too long," said wang haibo.

in 2022, taobao opened wechat pay internal testing, providing two methods: "wechat scan code to pay" and "go to wechat and ask friends to pay for me". more than half a year later, alipay began to support transferring money to wechat and qq friends by generating and scanning qr codes.

in january this year, xianyu, a second-hand e-commerce platform under alibaba, launched a wechat mini-program and supported wechat payment. in march, the topic "wechat can use dingtalk for meetings" became a hot search on weibo. users can join dingtalk meetings in wechat without downloading the dingtalk app.

at the end of august, many users noticed that the taote app now supports wechat payment. when placing an order, they can jump to the wechat payment interface, and then jump back to taote after the payment is completed. the user experience is no different from a normal third-party payment service, rather than the awkward and complicated scanning code payment, sending links to ask others to pay on their behalf, etc.

on the other hand, tencent is also slowly opening the door to alibaba. the most eye-catching thing is naturallywechat relaxes controls on e-commerce external links.

as early as september 2021, wechat announced that it would implement new external link management measures in stages and steps. two months later, the shoe finally landed: users will be able to directly access external links in private chat windows; at the same time, in group chat scenarios, the direct access function of e-commerce external links will be piloted.

at the same time, tencent is also trying to open the flow valve.launch advertising and marketing cooperation with alibaba on wechat scenarios.

in the same year that wechat conditionally allowed e-commerce external links, the advertising traffic of tencent video, tencent news, and qq was connected to alimama (ali's merchant marketing platform). taobao merchants can more easily make money from tencent's traffic pool.

after three years of cooperation, the two parties expanded their cooperation in 2023, allowing merchants to place advertisements on wechat video account, moments, mini programs, etc. through alimama, and directly jump to taobao tmall merchant stores, product details pages, taobao live broadcast rooms, etc.

now, with taobao’s integration into wechat pay,the interconnection between the two giants has finally broken through the "periphery" and entered their respective core areas.

taobao’s handshake with wechat pay has reopened the imagination space for the cooperation between alibaba and tencent.whether wechat will allow taobao mini-programs is one of the most noteworthy points to watch.

opening a mini program means the possibility of making money on wechat and attracting users. in the past, this "privilege" was given to tencent-invested companies such as jd.com, pinduoduo, and meituan. only small and medium-sized businesses under alibaba were allowed to do so, and taobao was excluded for a long time.

an alibaba executive once said that many businesses applied to open wechat mini programs, but they have not been successful. it was not until october 2022 that the simple "tmall supermarket xiaodangjia" mini program was launched, which gave the outside world a glimpse of the dawn of alibaba's layout of mini programs. more than half a year later, the "tmall premium" mini program was launched before the 618 e-commerce promotion, which further stimulated taobao's imagination of selling goods on wechat.

however, the two mini programs mentioned above did not continue to operate for a long time and are no longer searchable. alibaba did not use mini programs to attract wechat users.

now, with taobao’s integration into wechat pay, alibaba has gained more bargaining chips to compete with tencent again. the possibility of taobao entering the wechat ecosystem has also increased.

taobao’s integration into wechat pay is a footnote to the era in which internet giants are moving from competition to cooperation.

the new bat - bytedance, alibaba and tencent - once fought fiercely in various fields of the internet and built barriers to try to isolate users. however, with the changes in the internal and external environment, sticking to the "mountaintop" is no longer feasible, and both competition and cooperation have gradually become the mainstream.

in recent years, bytedance, alibaba, tencent and others no longer invest heavily in competing for niche markets, but instead invest more money and resources in their core businesses. even in the face of epoch-making technologies such as ai big models, the focus of the giants is on self-development, while appropriately investing in external entrepreneurs, rather than waving checkbooks to buy star companies.

at the same time,the cooperation between the old rivals is becoming more intensive and larger in scale.

the most typical example is the big settlement between tencent and bytedance over games. in the past one or two years, bytedance has massively reduced its game business and turned to work with tencent to earn advertising fees. when promoting new games, tencent also puts more budget on douyin rather than its own platform in order to achieve a higher input-output ratio.

today, alibaba and tencent are also facing a similar situation. taobao e-commerce naturally has a need to attract traffic from outside the site, and wechat traffic pool is a must-fight place. tencent needs to find more high-priced monetization scenarios for wechat in addition to advertising, but wechat stores have just been launched and there is still a long way to go before they can grow and develop. selling traffic to alibaba is one of the easiest solutions.

however, in order to take this crucial step, both alibaba and tencent need to first demonstrate sufficient sincerity.

the two giants have previously exchanged their resources and collaborated with each other in relatively minor areas, paving the way for a larger-scale partnership. taobao's integration into wechat pay can be understood as alibaba's proactive gesture of goodwill.will tencent dance with it and what kind of "feedback" will it provide?it will constitute the other half of the puzzle of a new wave of connectivity.

references:

alphabet list, "after three years of rectification, alibaba quietly shakes hands with tencent"

36kr, "taobao fully integrates with wechat pay, the internet industry really needs to be "interconnected""

hedgehog commune, "giving up taobao special app may be the beginning of alibaba's decisive battle against low prices"

latepost, "taobao announces access to wechat pay, "interconnection" to compete for efficiency through openness"

yicai global, "ali's financial report reveals: alibaba cloud's profit grew 155%, e-commerce gmv grew, profit fell"