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the three major domestic internet platforms, alibaba, tencent, and jd.com, have successively “tear down walls”.

on september 27, taobao officially announced that it supports alipay, wechat pay and other payment methods. you can experience it by updating the app to the latest version.

not only will taobao and tmall be fully connected to wechat payment, alibaba and jd.com are also expected to open up to each other.

the night before, there was market news that taobao and jd.com had reached an agreement on cooperation in logistics and payment: jd logistics would enter taobao, and jd.com would open alipay for payment.

as of press time, alibaba, jd.com, and alipay have not publicly responded to this news.

however, some netizens commented:internet,seemstart to return“interconnected”.from "the king does not see the king" to "tear down the wall" and open up, will the internet competition usher in a "great reconciliation"?

giants have “tear down walls” one after another

taobao and tmall are fully connected to wechat pay, jd.com is connected to alipay, and jd logistics is stationed on taobao... the "closed-loop" ecological walls created by each of the internet giants are gradually being torn down.

first, on september 5, taobao issued an announcement, clarifying that wechat payment will be gradually opened to all taobao and tmall merchants after september 12. this news is regarded as a milestone "tearing down the wall" event of the internet.

on september 27, taobao and tmall officially launched full access to wechat payment. on the same day, taobao officially announced that it supports wechat payment.

xiaoxiang morning news·jiaojiao finance reporter tested the platform and found that after completing the product purchase, select "wechat pay" on the payment page to complete the payment. the operation is consistent with the previous payment steps. but dousethis onefunction, you need to update to the latest version of taobao app.

△screenshot of reporter’s test page

almost at the same time, another milestone of "breaking down the wall" was also taking place: alibaba and jd.com began to open up logistics and payment.

according to cctv news, taobao and tmall are about to officially connect to jd logistics and are expected to go online in mid-october. this also means that in the future, taotian merchants will have a new jd logistics option when selecting the shipping method of goods in the system.

△screenshot from cctv news

at the same time, jd logistics will also be connected to cainiao express and cainiao post - cainiao's self-operated express brand and parcel collection site respectively.

even jd.com will officially access alipay payment, which is expected to be launched on the eve of "double 11". the reporter noticed that currently, when consumers place orders on jd.com, the payment methods are jd.com pay, wechat pay, etc.

△screenshot of jd.com payment page

in fact, internet giants have been competing for users and merchants for a long time, and each has established independent logistics, payment and other systems. this is also the main reason why outsiders use the term "tear down the wall" to describe the internet giant's breach of the wall.

but the “wall” that needs to be broken down is not there from the beginning.

once "enclosed" competition

going back to 2008, the “wall building” of the internet began in this year. at that time, taobao blocked baidu's data crawlers, which became the beginning of china's internet "wall building."

public information shows that five years later, in 2013, taobao and wechat started "blocking" each other. in july of that year, alibaba announced the suspension of third-party application services related to wechat on the grounds of controlling taobao transaction risks. in november, taobao mobile further blocked wechat, closing the channel to jump from wechat to taobao products and stores. when users click on the taobao link on wechat, the download and installation page of taobao mobile appears.

soon, tencent also took countermeasures. on the grounds of preventing malicious marketing, it blocked all taobao links in wechat, including jumps to download links, and turned it into a sentence: "the taobao website you visited has been blocked. if you need to browse, you can long copy the url and access it using your browser."

in 2015, taobao launched taobao password, which allows users to indirectly share product content on wechat by copying the password, but they still cannot directly open taobao on wechat.

another internet giantjingdong, previouslyalipay has also been supportedpay. but in may 2011,jd.com announced that it will stop using alipay as one of its payment methods.

for cooperation, jd.comgivenreasonthere are two points: first, alipay's rates are too high. every year, jd.com has to pay 5-6 million yuan more because of alipay's high rates; second, 80% of jd.com's payment is cash on delivery, and online unionpay payment rarely costs about 100,000 yuan. it is around 10%, so stopping cooperation with alipay will not affect users.

thenjd.com instead chose to cooperate with wechat pay and began to develop its own payment platform. in 2014, it launched the online payment platform jd.com pay.

why promote "tear down the wall"

in the eyes of the outside world, whether taobao and tmall fully integrate wechat payment, or alibaba and jd.com open up logistics and payment, they are all "shakes and peace" between old rivals after "blocking" each other for more than ten years.

so, why do internet giants promote "tear down the wall"?

times have changed, which is probably one of the important reasons.

during the period of incremental competition, internet giants often choose to "enclose territory and build walls" and create a "closed-loop" user ecology. to a certain extent, it has indeed helped to seize the market.protect your own traffic.however, as traffic growth peaks, the internet industry as a whole has entered a stage of competition for existing products.

jiang han, a senior researcher at pangu think tank, said in an interview that "the changing market environment and the increasingly diversified consumer demands have prompted companies to re-examine their strategies."

in his view, the internetcompetition among enterprises has gradually shifted from pure competition for market share to ecological co-construction and service quality improvement, and cooperation has become an important way to achieve win-win results.

in addition, the parties’ “shakes of peace” are closely related to the increasingly intensified crackdown on antitrust competition, requiring platforms to lift external link blocking and curb “choose-or” behavior in the payment process.

"the state advocates fair competition, breaks monopoly, and encourages interconnection between platforms to promote healthy market development." jiang han said.

it is also worth noting that the sudden rise of pinduoduo and the popularity of new business formats such as live streaming e-commerce and short videos on platforms such as douyin and kuaishou have all formed strong competition for traditional giants.

internet industry analyst zhang shule believes that the open model adopted by platforms such as pinduoduo and douyin "has also made the 'wall' in the entire market become a decoration in their growth process."

shift to open coopetition

at present, whether it is the connection between payment and logistics, the impact on relevant platforms is temporarily limited.

zhang shule told pepper finance reporter, "with the popularity of multiple payment methods, the value of using 'private land' to maintain user stickiness is no longer great." after completing the cutting of existing users, what is now competing is financial technology. the level of dimensionality upgrading will increase user activity and frequency of use. “therefore, the actual impact on users by breaking down barriers is already very low.”

as for the interconnection of logistics, zhang shule believes that “after alibaba has built its own logistics matrix, jd logistics’ access to taobao will only be a supplement rather than a threat.”

in other words, after "tearing down the wall", competition has returned to product quality, price, and service itself. this is the real challenge.

however, behind the successive "tear down walls" of internet giants,it's the entire internetof"interconnection". prior to this, many internet companies had already joined."interconnection" camp.

for example, in december 2021, kuaishou and meituan announced a strategic cooperation on interconnection. the two parties will use the kuaishou open platform to open up content scenario marketing, online transactions and offline contract fulfillment service capabilities.

another example,in january 2022, baidu joined forces with more than ten companies including meituan, xiaohongshu, sf express, ctrip, zhihu, tongcheng, maoyan, and 58.com to announce the launch of in-depth cooperation on interconnection, at the three levels of traffic, technology, and service ecosystem. carry out interconnection cooperation.

jiang han believes that the era of erecting barriers to acquire users is going away, and internet competition is gradually moving from "enclosure" competition to competition, cooperation and openness. "this change is the inevitable result of market development and is also the result of policy guidance and technological progress." effect".

when an open ecosystem gradually takes shape, where will internet competition and cooperation go? worth the wait.

xiaoxiang morning news pepper finance reporter luo yaqi and chen shixian