Alipay challenges real-name social networking, what is the success rate?

Alipay and WeChat each have their own status in the industry and originally did not interfere with each other. However, WeChat was unable to find a profit model and ultimately bet its future on payment. It also creatively used the phrase "connecting everything" to describe its strategy, which gradually led to the two major platforms facing a decisive battle against each other.
In the past, facing the aggressiveness of WeChat, Alibaba mostly took tactical counterattacks, but strategically used single new products to compete with it. Alipay, which was regarded as a target, remained silent. We all know that the same is true for products. If you don’t explode in silence, you will die in silence.

In a season when the stock market was wailing, Alipay suddenly announced a change of logo and color and launched social functions, penetrating deeply into the core areas of WeChat without reservation. In other words, Alipay integrated almost all the functions of WeChat into Alipay at once, confirming Jack Ma's oath that he would attack the penguin's hometown in the summer.

In China, Tencent is the leader in social networking. Even though Tencent has never been a complete social networking company, its QQ and WeChat are the giants in instant messaging social tools. No other Chinese Internet company has been able to shake them. Alibaba's Laiwang has basically failed. This time, Alipay is coming with "money". Will it have any impact on WeChat?

The friendship between gentlemen is as light as water. Money and social interaction are far apart. However, WeChat has been committed to mobile payment and has been fighting with Alipay for almost two years in any scenario related to mobile payment. Later, it also developed micro-business forces, hoping to use social networking to enter the e-commerce industry, which has been repeatedly defeated. However, WeChat's road to payment is not smooth. The momentum of WeChat payment has been blocked, and micro-business has declined. It can be seen that the gap between social and finance is difficult to fill.
Alipay and WeChat have a large number of installed bases, and are both considered super apps in mobile client applications, but their usage varies greatly. Alipay is a functional application, and users who frequently use it for money transfers or financial management may open it more frequently. Many other people only think of it as a tool for payment, and do not open it frequently. As a result, many customers are unaware of many new features, and Alipay has become a representative of low-frequency applications. On the contrary, WeChat has a circle of friends, groups, and a large amount of gossip news. Many people will open it when they have nothing to do, and WeChat has become a representative of high-frequency applications.

Although Alipay has a low user rate, it is valuable because it contains money. Almost all applications involve money, and it is a heavyweight value application, so it is cautious and users have extremely high requirements for its security. Of course, in order to ensure the security of its transactions, Alipay also has high requirements for users, such as real-name account system, and even requires users with financial management needs to verify their ID cards. In addition, Alipay is connected to Taobao Tmall and many other e-commerce applications, so the user's address, phone number and transaction records can guarantee the authenticity and validity of the account to the greatest extent.

Unlike Alipay, WeChat, which is closely related to QQ, has not yet implemented the real-name system. The WeChat wallet has even been questioned for lacking a legal license. In fact, this is also the dilemma faced by WeChat. The real-name system is a necessary path to e-commerce and finance, but the real-name system is also the Waterloo of Chinese online social networking. If WeChat does not enforce the real-name system, it will not be able to achieve a breakthrough in either e-commerce or payment. However, if the real-name system is enforced, the foundation of WeChat will collapse, and it may lose both the wife and the army.

In the field of social finance, WeChat has always been a challenger, entering the financial sector through social networking, while Alipay has been passively defending, because Alipay, which was born from the PC side, has no need for social networking and does not have the basic genes for social networking. However, due to the development of mobile Internet, O2O has become more and more a reality, and payment scenarios have increasingly connected people and money, and Alipay has the capital to engage in social networking.
We can make a simple analogy. Each of our Alipay is a fully armed soldier. Everyone has learned all-round skills in the training camp, but there is a lack of team integration between people. What Alipay needs to do now is to train everyone's Alipay to form a group combat effectiveness, while WeChat's approach is to combine groups of people first, but the quality and ability of these people are uneven. What is needed is to let the soldiers practice and improve one by one after forming a community team. As for who is more combat-effective, it depends on the different development speeds of the two companies.

The development of social networking with real-name system is bound to be extremely difficult, but we can start with some distinctive businesses, such as the direct combination of community and financial investment, the combination of merchant discounts and payment, lending and trust between friends. These all require real names and are highly related to money. Relying on various financial applications such as Alipay and Yu'ebao and online and offline payment capabilities, and innovatively developing some highly attractive products, we will find a living space suitable for ourselves just like Want Want. Once there is progress in social networking, even if it is only a small step, it will greatly increase the frequency of use of Alipay, which will be of great benefit to the promotion of its new products and its position in the mobile Internet era.

Therefore, the success or failure of Alipay's social networking does not depend on the activity of ordinary users, but on the degree of attentiveness and usage of merchants and institutions that control money. The speed of a train depends on the locomotive. To advance into real-name social networking, Alipay has a long way to go.