In August 2006, we published a report called "Mobile Payment in China: Bricks and Clicks Going Mobile?". In this report, we analyzed several mobile companies in China, including a company in Beijing called Nation-M. Just recently, we had trouble opening their website and had trouble getting through to their office. We even tried to contact Nation-M's founder via his direct line, but that number has been canceled by the telephone company already.
Does this mean that Nation-M has gone under? Could this be the beginning of a market consolidation phase in China's m-payment industry? We decided to explore further into this situation to see what we could dig up.
As my colleague Boaz has mentioned in a previous post , Alipay's overseas expansion is not going as smoothly as planned. I have take a closer look into Alipay's international business and found the following tidbits:
1. Alipay's international merchants consist mostly of retailers from cosmetics, fashion, personal electronics based in Hong Kong and Taiwan. To a certain degree, this "international market" is largely limited to Greater China, not too much about America and Europe, i.e. a broader sense of international market.
On January 3rd, China daily reported on a newly issued ban on the online sale of lottery tickets:
The online sale of lottery tickets was banned yesterday by a circular jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the General Administration of Sports.
This is a potential blow to China's third-party payment providers.
LinQpay and IPS have just announced a China M-Payment Joint Venture.
This new joint venture is a major move by IPS to increase its competitive edge in China's growing payment market. Although one of the only few profitable payment providers in China, IPS's 1.5 million strong user base is dwarfed compared to its competition: Alipay with 50+ million, Tenpay with 25+ million, and YeePay with 10+ million.
On December 20th Alipay issued a press release announcing a cooperation agreement with Philliou Selwanes Partners to promote the acceptance of Alipay's services to North American merchants.
Alipay, which is one of China's leading third-party payment providers has recently been focusing on expansion to overseas markets, namely Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and now the US.
