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it is no longer news that taobao and tmall will be connected to wechat pay. in 2022, taobao once opened the internal test of wechat pay to some users. but yesterday (september 4),the latest news about taobao’s integration with wechat pay is still “causing a lot of waves”.

first, taobao publicly released the "opinions collection on the new wechat payment capability of taobao", and plans to fully integrate wechat payment by the end of this month. tmall then released the "opinions collection on the new wechat payment capability of tmall". at the same time, wechat also clearly responded that the function adaptation with taobao platform merchants is being opened, and the specific launch time is subject to taobao platform announcements.

photo/taobao

in other words, if nothing unexpected happens, we should be able to usher in a historic change by the end of september - using alipay or wechat pay on the taobao app.

as soon as the news came out, "taobao will fully support wechat payment" quickly spread across the chinese internet. the attention of the media and netizens is easy to understand. as the two super applications of the chinese people, taobao and wechat have long become an inseparable part of the chinese people's modern lifestyle, and every move affects our lives.

with the mutual ban between wechat and taobao as the starting point, china's internet once entered a stage where tencent internet and alibaba internet competed against each other, until the ice began to be broken in 2021.

since then, the two sides have gradually put aside their past grievances. among alibaba's apps, ele.me, youku, damai, kaola, shuqi and other apps were the first to connect to wechat pay and launched wechat mini-programs; wechat also no longer blocks links to taobao.

photo/lei technology

even though the subsequent progress of interconnection between the two sides is relatively slow, it is still advancing, including taobao's internal testing of "wechat scan code payment" and "go to wechat to ask friends to pay for me" in early 2022.

this trend has also continued from 2024 to the present. not only are some small programs such as xianyu available on wechat, but dingtalk announced at the beginning of the year that users can directly join dingtalk meetings through wechat without downloading the dingtalk meeting client. it can be said that it is only a matter of time before taobao app supports wechat payment.

despite this, the full introduction of wechat pay to taobao can still be regarded as a landmark event for alibaba and tencent, and even for china's internet. however, to this day, how far has the interconnection between alibaba and tencent progressed?

payment, mini-programs, links... three years after alibaba and tencent "interconnected"

first of all, it should be pointed out that although the taobao app has not yet been connected to wechat pay, the taobao special edition app (formerly known as "taote") has actually been connected to wechat pay. during the test, xiao lei found that the items in the personal shopping cart on the taobao special edition app currently support wechat pay, but whether it is fully supported has yet to be officially confirmed.

taobao special edition, photo/lei technology

since the taobao special edition app and the taobao app share the same shopping cart, it can be said that taobao already supports wechat payment to some extent. as for the web page, taobao currently does not support wechat qr code payment, and it is not known whether it will be launched simultaneously at the end of september.

in addition, since 2021, alipay and wechat pay have also been "running in both directions", especially under the "mediation" of the "national team" unionpay quickpass.at present, unionpay quickpass app has achieved interoperability with multiple platforms such as alipay and wechat pay. in addition, wechat pay and unionpay quickpass also announced the realization of "interoperability" in all scenarios in june this year.

on the same day that taobao announced that it would fully integrate with wechat pay, two core businesses of tencent-affiliated meituan, meituan takeaway and meituan hotel, also entered the alipay mini program, and meituan group buying is in internal testing. considering that ele.me has already launched wechat mini programs and supports wechat pay, at least when it comes to ordering takeout, we can finally have "payment freedom".

the second from the right is the meituan takeaway wechat applet, and the third from the right is the meituan takeaway alipay applet. photo: lei technology

xiao lei also tried the meituan takeaway alipay applet briefly. when he opened it, he saw a 2.85 yuan (available for purchases over 10 yuan) meituan takeaway exclusive coupon (alipay). the core functions are relatively complete, but it is still relatively simple compared to the wechat applet version. but as the first version, it is understandable.

compared with tencent, alibaba is more active in launching wechat mini-programs:

in addition to applications such as youku, damai, and kaola, core businesses such as taopiaopiao, ele.me, fliggy, cainiao, autonavi, and xianyu have also been launched on wechat mini-programs. it even launched a wechat mini-program called "tmall premium", but it was quickly removed from the shelves.

it is worth mentioning that alibaba’s hema fresh has also settled in the wechat mini program. however, based on xiao lei’s offline experience and media reports, among hema fresh’s offline stores, except for the outlet stores that support both alipay and wechat payment, other stores do not support wechat payment.

in addition to payment and mini-programs, "links" are also a major breakthrough.

as we all know, the direct cause of the mutual ban between tencent and alibaba was the fight between taobao and wechat in 2013: on the one hand, taobao cut off the wechat data interface, banned wechat qr codes and even the word "wechat"; on the other hand, wechat blocked taobao links and prohibited users from accessing taobao within wechat.

but in 2021, eight years after the ban, wechat finally lifted the link blocking. although the copy link still has "martian language", users can still access taobao links on wechat. at the same time, the word "wechat" is no longer a banned word on taobao.

no need to deal with martian language anymore, photo/lei technology

after that, the two have been slowly advancing. today, taobao links and texts can be sent normally on wechat, and users can click to access and jump to the taobao app normally. of course, compared with pinduoduo and jd.com, which can share products in chats in the form of mini-programs, there is still a lot of room for optimizing the experience between taobao and wechat.

in addition, on the eve of double 11 last year, alimama, alibaba's digital marketing subsidiary, and tencent advertising officially announced their cooperation. tencent's wechat video accounts, moments, mini-programs and other resources will be open to taobao and tmall, and direct jumps can be achieved through alimama's advertising.

in other words, tencent's core wechat can finally direct traffic to alibaba's core taobao tmall. prior to this, tencent video, tencent news, qq, and wechat public accounts also realized direct jumps to taobao tmall in advance.

although the interconnection between alibaba and tencent in the core territories has not progressed rapidly, it can be seen that the interconnection between the two has become an inevitable trend.

a more open chinese internet is friendlier to ordinary people

back to three years ago, the confrontation between tencent and alibaba once again aroused the dissatisfaction of the public and regulators. the ministry of industry and information technology focused on requiring internet companies to rectify issues such as blocking url links. last week (august 30), the state administration for market regulation announced on its official website that the department supervised alibaba group holding limited to complete three years of rectification.

photo: state administration for market regulation

from 2021 to 2024, the environment in which alibaba and tencent are located has also changed greatly. when alibaba group ceo wu yongming took office last year, he said that alibaba must be more open and must put user experience first. in the past three years, we can indeed see that alibaba has become more open and pays more attention to user experience.

on the other hand, facing the pressure faced by the e-commerce industry as a whole and the pressure from competitors such as pinduoduo and douyin, alibaba must also find more users, orders and gmv.

specifically speaking of taobao's integration with wechat pay, tencent's payment products have successfully entered the alibaba ecosystem, which not only means that taobao users have an additional payment option, which can improve the user experience, but also takes into account the absolute market share of wechat and wechat pay in counties, towns and other areas, directly laying a solid foundation for alibaba to penetrate the lower-tier markets at the payment level.

for tencent, supporting taobao also expands an important online e-commerce scenario for wechat pay, finding more users and orders, and making the super application wechat more versatile in the digital life of chinese people.

for every ordinary person, when taobao is connected to wechat pay, all parties begin to pay more attention to and cater to users, and abandon the past pursuit of a closed ecosystem. this means that we can enjoy a better user experience and a more open chinese internet, which is a good thing from every perspective.

this was also unimaginable in the past, but the situation is stronger than people, and both users and the environment have changed.