Ant Financial releases AliPay app

Moreover, they can also connect with and pay for a growing array of local services using their smartphones. It was originally known as Alipay Wallet. The new app—now called Alipay 9.0—includes a redesigned user interface as well as added functions for enhanced mobile access to purchase and pay for products and services from local restaurants, shops and other outlets, to obtain discount e-coupons and share product recommendations and red envelopes with friends, among other features.

The app started out as a tool for people to e-pay for goods and services in physical stores using their smartphones, and while payment capabilities remain the backbone of the app, it can also provide services for both small merchants and retailers and users. The user interface for the app, available for the iOS and Android operating systems, incorporates two new main tabs —Merchants and Friends— to organise smartphone activities, according to Ant Financial. Through the Merchants tab, users can learn the locations of nearby restaurants and shops, get discounted coupons, and settle payments at merchants e-shops via Alipay, as they can when shopping online. Users can also pay merchants by scanning barcodes or QR codes at cash registers.

Local services will be available via Koubei, a recently launched joint venture between Alibaba Group and Ant Financial aimed at making local services more accessible through O2O (online-to-offline) e-commerce. More than 130,000 restaurants across China accept Alipay as a payment option, which includes 5,000 KFC restaurants. Supermarket chains including Carrefour, Ole and Walmart also accept Alipay at their check-out counters. The Friends tab contains social functions such as messaging—a new feature—as well as an instant money transfer button so people can pay each other electronically, and an IOU tab allowing users to keep track of friendly loans. Alipay 9.0 is not designed to be a stand-alone messaging app like Alibaba’s Laiwang IM app. Rather, it allows users to communicate mostly on financial-related matters.