Billionaire Jack Ma steps up battle with WeChat

Bloomberg: Alipay, the mobile payment app owned by billionaire Jack Ma, is stepping up its competition with WeChat to get more of its 900 million users to tap expanded services in everything from real estate purchases to restaurant and cinema bookings. Alipay is targeting 40 million merchant and services providers to use its mini programs – a lite app that sits on top of its interface and provides quick access to an array of services. The company has been experimenting with the initiative for three years and now has about 1.7 million such programs.

The move escalates the competition between Alipay and WeChat, the super app owned by Asia’s second largest company and Jack Ma’s rival billionaire Pony Ma. After seeing a surge in online demand during the Covid-19 virus outbreak, Alipay introduced incentives to encourage developers to create mini programs that help users cope with the impact.