微信支付与支付宝硬碰硬

China’s $5.5tn mobile payments sector — more than 50 times bigger than that of the US — is being shaken up by one-time underdog Tencent, which is snatching market share from rival Alibaba.

曾经处于劣势的腾讯(Tencent)正在撼动中国5.5万亿美元的移动支付市场，从竞争对手阿里巴巴(Alibaba)那里抢夺市场份额。中国移动支付市场的规模是美国的50倍。

Alipay, which Alibaba launched in 2004 as a PayPal-type service to facilitate payments on its Taobao ecommerce platform, has long dominated China’s mobile payments. But its share of the market had fallen to nearly half by the end of last year while Tencent’s rose to more than a third.

支付宝(Alipay)是阿里巴巴于2004年推出的一种类似PayPal的服务，目的是方便在其电商平台淘宝(Taobao)上的支付活动。长期以来，支付宝一直主宰着中国的移动支付市场。但到去年底，支付宝的市场份额快要降至一半，而腾讯的市场份额升至逾三分之一。

Alibaba had a 54 per cent market share in the fourth quarter of 2016 compared with 71 per cent in the third quarter of 2017, according to the latest data from consultancy Analysys. Tencent’s share rose to 37 per cent against 16 per cent in the comparable periods. ApplePay, which launched in China early last year, did not feature in the top 10.

根据咨询公司易观(Analysys)的数据，2016年第四季度，阿里巴巴占据54%的市场份额，而2017年第三季度其份额曾高达71%。同期，腾讯的市场份额从16%升至37%。去年初在中国推出的Apple Pay没有挤入前十。

China leads the world in mobile payments, buoyed by a boom in online shopping and the relative dearth of alternatives such as credit cards. iResearch said China’s mobile payments hit $5.5tn last year, 50 times the size of the US’s $112bn market, based on Forrester Research figures.

受网络购物热潮和信用卡等其他支付方式相对缺乏的推动，中国的移动支付领先全球。艾瑞咨询(iResearch)表示，根据Forrester Research的数据，去年，中国的移动支付规模达到5.5万亿美元，是美国（1120亿美元）的50倍。

Tencent, best known for its gaming and social media platform WeChat with 890m users, entered the arena a decade after Alibaba and for a year the two staged an expensive battle to attract customers.

腾讯以其游戏和拥有8.90亿用户的社交媒体平台微信(WeChat)最为知名。腾讯的微信支付(Weixin Pay)比阿里巴巴的支付宝晚十年推出，两家公司打了为期一年的昂贵的用户争夺战。

Tencent’s Weixin Pay burst on to the scene with digital hongbao, the red envelopes of money handed over as gifts during lunar new year. The ability to send hongbao online via WeChat accounts revolutionised a centuries-old tradition: this year 64bn hongbao were exchanged over the six-day holiday period.

腾讯的微信支付凭借电子红包强势登场。通过微信账号发送在线红包的模式，颠覆了几百年的传统：今年春节假期从除夕到初五这六天，微信红包收发总量为460亿个。

“If we don’t consider red envelopes and [Alibaba] don’t count Taobao transactions, we don’t know which one is bigger,” Zhang Ying, Tencent vice-president, told a conference in Hong Kong last month.

腾讯副总裁张颖上月在香港一个会议上表示：“如果我们不考虑红包，（阿里巴巴）也不把淘宝交易算在内的话，我们不知道哪一个做得更大。”

The battle for share in payments is less to do with profits — charges barely cover costs, according to one industry player — but in the value of the data gathered from spending habits and financial information.

争夺支付领域的市场份额在更大程度上不是为了利润（据一位业内人士表示，在该领域，收费将将够抵消成本），而是为了从用户的支付习惯和金融信息中搜集有价值的数据。

Industry consultants attribute Tencent’s rise to the pervasive use of WeChat and merchants’ desire to avoid relying on one provider.

行业咨询人士将腾讯的崛起归因于微信的普及和商户避免依赖一家供应商的愿望。

“The dominance of the Taobao and T-Mall ecommerce platforms initially helped make Alipay the default digital wallet in China,” said Jeff Galvin, partner at McKinsey in Hong Kong.

麦肯锡(McKinsey)驻香港合伙人杰夫?高尔文(Jeff Galvin)表示：“起初，电商平台淘宝和天猫(Tmall)的主导地位帮助让支付宝成为中国默认的电子钱包。

“But now, as Chinese spend more and more time in the WeChat ecosystem — and they keep funds in its wallet for peer-to-peer payments, in-app purchases, and other things — [Weixin Pay] has really emerged as a peer competitor to Alipay.”

“但如今，随着中国人在微信平台花费的时间越来越多，他们把钱存入微信钱包用于个人对个人支付、在应用内购物以及其他活动，（微信支付）确实成为了支付宝的对等竞争对手。”

Tencent has signed up physical stores this year, including Starbucks. Almost all of the US group’s 2,600 China cafés accept Weixin Pay — the one on Alibaba’s campus in Hangzhou being a notable exception.

今年腾讯与包括星巴克(Starbucks)在内的实体门店签约。星巴克在中国的几乎所有2600家门店都接受微信支付，阿里巴巴杭州园区的门店是个显眼的例外。

TenPay is the platform serving Weixin Pay; WeChat Pay, the overseas version; and QQ Wallet, its digital wallet.

财付通(TenPay)为微信支付、WeChat Pay（微信支付海外版）以及QQ钱包提供底层技术支持。

“TenPay has a clear path,” said Mr Zhang. “In 2017 we focused on hongbao. Last year we tried to develop the offline merchants. This year my objective is to cover more than 10m small merchants or stores in China.”

“财付通的路线很清楚，”张颖表示，“2017年，我们关注红包。去年，我们努力开发线下商户。今年，我们的目标是覆盖中国逾1000万家小商户或店铺。”

Alibaba has fought back, building its own physical network — including overseas, where 110,000 shops accept Alipay. It says it has signed up more than 2m physical shops in China with 10m merchants on Taobao using Alipay.

阿里巴巴已展开回击，该公司扩大了自己的实体门店网络，包括在海外，有11万家店铺接受支付宝。阿里巴巴表示，已与中国逾200万家实体店铺签约。有1000万家淘宝商户使用支付宝。

Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that runs Alipay, also points to its broader financial services offerings, such as money market fund Yu’e Bao, which now has Rmb1.14tn ($165.6bn) under management, up from Rmb808bn in the fourth quarter of 2016.

管理支付宝的阿里巴巴关联公司蚂蚁金融(Ant Financial)还提到自己旗下的其他金融服务，例如货币市场基金余额宝，该基金现管理着1.14万亿元人民币（合1656亿美元）资金，2016年第四季度的这个数字为8080亿元人民币。