Alipay deepens teamwork with Sina

Alipay, the payment unit of China's largest e-commerce company, yesterday extended its payment service to Sina under a strategic tie-up to deepen cooperation amid rising competition among Internet giants in the mobile payment field. 

Under the partnership, Alipay and Sina Weibo intend to grow revenue from online payments via the popular social networking channel. The deal followed on from Alipay's parent, Alibaba, paying US$586 million for an 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like microblog service, last year.

Registered merchants and enterprises on Weibo will be able to post their merchandise on their official accounts and customers can buy gift coupons and take advantage of other discounts by using Alipay's payment platform.

Sina allows users of Taobao, an Alibaba unit, to open official accounts on Weibo and connecting them with Alipay means a better integration with Weibo's existing service.

More than 100,000 Taobao vendors have opened official accounts on Weibo and nearly 50 percent of active users at Weibo have connected their accounts with Taobao.

"The battle is still in the early stage and a smooth user experience is a crucial factor for winning," said Chen Yongdong, an associate professor at Shanghai Theater Academy, who focuses on new media marketing and communications.

Tencent's popular smartphone chatting software WeChat has nearly 30 million registered users of its payment service.