Alibaba's Financial Affiliate Collaborates With Samsung
The online retailer's Alipay has tied up with Samsung Pay to grow outside China at a time when the Chinese economy is suffering from a slowdown
Samsung Electronics Company has agreed with Alipay, which is Alibaba’s financial –services subsidiary,to collaborate on mobile payments, as the South Korean smartphone manufacturer tries to bolster its foothold in China, a large market for smartphones where it has not been able to easily grow in the recent times. The 2 organizations stated the Seoul based company’s mobile payment facility, known as Samsung Pay, will make efforts with Ant financial Services Group’s payment service Alipay.
Alipay has an active registered user base of over 450 million. In recent times, Ant financial completed a funding round of $4.5 billion, which took the valuation of the private organization to about $60 billion. The consumer electronics maker touts Samsung Pay as a selling feature for its first-class products, a partnership with the payment service provider could help its facility get an extensive reach in a marketplace it’s desperate to re-build its success in.
In recent years, Samsung’s performance in the country has been adversely affected. After being the leading No 1 smartphone maker in the region, the company has fallen to 6th position, overtaken by local handset manufacturers, including Xiamoi Corporation, Huawei Technologies and other companies. For the Chinese E-commerce company, working with Samsung could let it grow overseas, which is its priority especially given the economic slowdown in China.
In April, Alibaba’s Alipay was rolled out in the European region, and earlier in 2016, the payment service provider signed an agreement with Uber to permit users in the region to pay fares for rides with the online retailer’s payment service while visiting outside the boundaries of mainland China. Alipay manages an expected 58% of all online transactions in the country, revealed Credit Suisse, underpinning the uphill challenge that troubles Samsung as rivalry in the mobile payments industry intensifies in the nation.
Over 358 million people in China use E-payment services on their smartphones, revealed data provided by the China Internet Network Information Center. Tencent-offered WeChat Pay ranks second in terms of the market share in China. It is followed by a number of other payment systems, which are making efforts to grow in the country. These include Apple’s Apple Pay, which was rolled out in Feb 2016 and Huawei’s Huawei Pay.
The South Korean organization started to pre-load Samsung Pay on its first-class phones in 2015. In March, it added support for the country, in a tie-up with the state-controlled leading car issuer Union Pay. While Alipay is often used for handling online payments, it’s being increasingly accepted by conventional retailers as well as restaurants around the Chinese region
Samsung Pay lets its users load details of their credit cards on their phones. The users can then use those details to make payments at cash registers, which are equipped with conventional magnetic- stripe machines and future generation near- field communication technology.
