Chinese fans of fried chicken will soon have a new way of paying for their food fix after Alibaba’s Alipay payments unit hooked up with KFC.
It was the biggest move by a Chinese ecommerce group to diversify through an online-to-offline (O2O) deal.
Alipay’s agreement with KFC China — the country’s biggest food delivery business with 5,000 restaurants across 900 cities — was followed by search engine Baidu saying it would invest Rmb20bn ($3.2bn) over the next three years in Baidu Nuomi, its Groupon-like marketplace.
Analysts said the focus on O2O — wher customers use smartphones to find, order and pay for goods from food to ride-hailing apps — marked a shift in the industry as growth slowed in pure online sales.
Ecommerce groups such as Alibaba have chased growth by buying into “combined channel” merchants, which have an online and offline presence.
Alibaba’s deal with KFC will be the biggest partnership with retailers to allow customers to pay by scanning bar codes using Alipay’s smartphone app.
KFC will be the third big retailer to accept Alipay after Walmart and Carrefour began doing so this year. (www.chinainout.com)
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