Virtual credit cards: Alipay steals march
Print Edition
CHINA’S leading third-party payment companies, Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s TenPay, are scrambling to launch the virtual credit card as they look to tap into personal consumer finance while enticing users to make more online payments through their service platforms.
Both the Internet giants are partnering with China CITIC Bank to launch their virtual credit cards, with Alipay announcing yesterday that it will issue 1 million cards in the first batch as early as next week.
“Alipay and TenPay are both promoting the virtual card through their smartphone apps. The competition is on the number of app users, which presently is even between the two,” Hua Ming, analyst at consumer financial service company Bankrate Inc, said yesterday. “Alipay seems to be more generous in granting credits. Also no one can challenge Alibaba’s dominance in e-commerce. Therefore, applications for Alipay’s virtual card will be much larger.”
“China CITIC Bank will bear the cost of setting up new terminals for offline merchants, so that consumers can pay by scanning two-dimensional codes instead of using a physical card,” Hua added.
Alipay said yesterday 1 million virtual credit cards will be issued in the first batch, starting next week. Its 300 million real-name authenticated users can apply for the card online and will receive instant approval. However, unlike a physical credit card, the virtual card can only be used on Alipay for online payments at the moment.
Alipay’s card will have a minimum credit limit of 200 yuan (US$32.57), which can be gradually hiked according to the users’ online shopping and payment records with the firm.
TenPay said it will also launch 1 million virtual credit cards and applications will be gradually open to users in batches, without specifying a timetable. It can be used both online and at some offline merchants.
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