On March 10th, Alipay held the first Alipay Partner Conference in the form of live broadcast.

The special conference during the epidemic period is directly related to the impact of the epidemic development. According to Hu Xiaoming, CEO of Ant Financial Services Group, since January 26, have 200,000 merchants quickly entered the market through takeaways? Are there tens of thousands of roadside shops, catering companies, five-star hotels, and even art bookstores? , All hope to take the form of take-out to resist the cliff-like decline in offline passenger flow and sales.

Hu Xiaoming announced at the meeting that in the face of the opportunity for service industry transformation and upgrading, Alipay has been upgraded from a financial payment platform to an open platform for digital living. Alipay ’s slogan has also been upgraded from “pay with Alipay” to “live well with Alipay” . In an earlier closed-door communication meeting including media such as Ai Fan’er, Hu called the upgrade “the biggest challenge in 15 years for Alipay, no less than from the PC era to the mobile Internet era.”

▲ Hu Xiaoming, CEO of Ant Financial Group and Chairman of Ali Local Life Services Company

The most intuitive change is the change of the Alipay app homepage interface, which adds the option to select the city entrance. In some big cities,Entrances to takeaways, food / play, hotels, movies, and civic centers have also been added. In addition, Alipay’s search system and support policies have been further upgraded to help service providers, brands, and coders (using QR codes). Offline, small and micro operators doing business) for digital transformation and growth.

The ultimate goal of Alipay is to play an important role in the process of online and offline services. Behind it is a service market valued at 50-60 trillion, which is even ten times larger than the e-commerce market. Hu Xiaoming believes, “The Internet In the service industry upgrade, 5% was completed, and the maximum was not more than 10%. “

Alipay’s “Face Change”: Bluer Colors and Outstanding Living Services

The latest version of the Alipay app has been upgraded to 10.1.88. Alipay ’s brand color has also changed, from a light blue to a deeper one, and a stronger contrast with white. Hu Xiaoming called it “Alipay Blue”, thinking that it “is very transparent, more penetrating, saturated, and more vibrant than the original Alipay color.”

The biggest change is the Alipay app homepage. The city entrance has been added to the upper left corner. The default display is based on positioning, and users can also choose manually. When choosing Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other big cities, five buttons such as takeaway, food / entertainment, hotel accommodation, movie performance and civic center will appear at the top of “My Apps” on the homepage. , Flying Pig Hotel Accommodation, Amoy Tickets and Alipay’s “City Services” provide services. Click on the first four services, the prominent position above will display “Information display service provided by Alipay”.

▲ Comparison between Alipay’s old (left) and new homepages

This also seems to mean that there may be more third-party and even non-Alibaba services here. Hu Xiaoming gave an affirmative reply to this. This is also the purpose of Alipay to create an open platform for digital life. p>

In the current version, the other parts of the Alipay app home page under “My Apps” have not changed much, mainly consisting of message notifications, banner advertising spaces, wealth life, value-for-money group purchases, and daily must-buy. However, in an earlier beta version, the homepage had a larger revision. Under the banner ad space, restaurant recommendations appeared in the form of picture information flow, and the words “Enjoy the evening time”.

Hu Xiaoming said that this recommendation is “thousands of people”, mainly based on three factors: the first is the location, because the service is ultimately strongly related to the geographical location; the second is the time, many services have time attributes; the third It is customer demand. He also emphasized that Alipay’s algorithm treats different services equally, “Hungry friends and hungry friends … As long as you reach this business, I think consumers will have a chance to choose.”

If the revised version of Alipay and Meituan become more similar, the “citizen center” provided by city services is the unique advantage of Alipay. Social security, provident fund, living payment, car owner services, immigration and other government affairs and livelihood services can be online. Address the daily needs of many citizens.

Also, there is a small change in the Alipay app. The second button in the navigation bar at the bottom of the homepage has changed from “Wealth” to “Finance”. You can pull down to see Yu’ebao, Huayan, and Borrow in the “Finance” interface 呗 and reserves, etc., but in the old version of the “Fortune” interface, you can’t slide down, you can only see the total assets.

Local life services, government affairs and people’s livelihood services, and financial services together form the “Digital Living Open Platform” in Alipay’s vision, with the goal of offline services worth tens of trillions.

In order to fulfill this vision, Alipay also carried out several rounds of personnel adjustments and organizational changes. In January of this year, Hu Xiaoming, who was just reassigned from Alibaba Cloud to Ant Financial, started to serve as a director of Ali’s local life services companyLong, the local life service was established in 2018, which is a combination of word of mouth and hungry.

On March 6th, according to multiple media reports, Alibaba’s local life service company adjusted the structure of Hungry and Word of Mouth, and merged its business products into a large team, and adjusted it to home, store, business center, and innovation. Big business group.

What is “digital life”: online and offline integrated services

Helping offline service online is the focus of Alipay’s current digital life transformation.

Why are offline businesses trying to do online business? The outbreak gave an answer. Offline customer traffic has fallen steeply, which is a severe test for all offline merchants. Home service, online ordering, picking up from stores, and launching online malls have become a way to carry out “self-help.” The common choice of businesses. ”

Hu Xiaoming revealed in a closed-door communication meeting that according to Alipay data, during the epidemic, business improved for online and offline integration, service providers, suppliers and Internet-based community services that are closely related to geographical attributes . For example, a makeup brand called Lin Qingxuan used to sell goods mainly through Tmall and offline stores. During the epidemic, it began to try to sell goods by live broadcast. Currently, 70% -80% of its business is achieved through live broadcast.

For merchants, grasping each consumption scenario is the future trend, and online and digital product and consumer data can allow merchants to better intervene in more consumption scenarios, and to their customers, Members for more accurate marketing and services. Even if the epidemic is over, this is a trend for merchants to upgrade their services.

What role does Alipay play in this process?

In September 2018, Alipay Mini Program was officially launched. Jingxian Dong, Chairman of Ant Financial, said at the time that “Mini Program is one of the most important strategies for Alipay in the next three years.” Alipay Mini Program Division was established immediately. Alibaba has worked for more than 10 years. He Yongming, who has been responsible for technology, products and operations in different periods, became the general manager of the business unit. In 2019, He continuously revealed to the outside world that Alipay Mini Program hopes to take an ecologically open path. According to the latest information obtained by Ai Fan’er, so far, the number of Alipay applets has reached 1.7 million.

The Alipay applet is actually a tool for merchants to connect consumers with Alipay and even Alibaba Ecology. Consumers can experience consistent services on different operating systems and terminals (self-service ordering machines, smart cash registers, etc.). You can access the financial capabilities of Ant Financial, such as calyx and loans, as well as marketing capabilities such as posters, membership, and coupons through small programs.

In 2019, the Alipay applet was upgraded to the Ali applet. The high-tech maps, Tmall, Weibo, and even Nail, Hungry, Tmall Elf, and Freefish in the Ali system have begun or will soon be linked. The Alipay applet opens up. For users, more services can be directly obtained in the above applications; for merchants, this means reaching the scene and marketing of the full link.

Alibaba is good at formulating a clear strategy, and then firmly advancing along this strategy. Hu Xiaoming believes that the current digital life upgrade is only the initial stage of content integration and service integration. Can Alibaba’s supply chain be used in the future? , Member operations, financial services, live broadcast capabilities … including many SaaS-based service capabilities, helping merchants improve efficiency and operate members are the key to the problem. “If we have 40% -50% of merchants using Alibaba’s commercial operating system, I think the upgrade of digital life can really be regarded as an enabling function.”

What is “open”: relationship with Meituan, similarities and differences with WeChat

Another key word in Alipay’s new strategy is “open”.

This means that Alipay hopes to use an ecological approach to introduce more third-party merchants, service providers, and partners to achieve their goals. Hu Xiaoming specifically mentioned Meituan, “From financial payment platforms to open platforms for digital life, do we hope to grow more and more hungry in Alipay? Meituan, more and more Flying Pig Ctrip, for Alipay’s Members provide richer digital life services … “

This is considered to be the first time in the past 3 years that Alibaba executives have mentioned positively a new relationship with Meituan. At the first Wuzhen Internet Conference in 2014, Ma Yun also made a similar move. In his “debate” with Liu Qiangdong, he said that Alibaba’s goal is to cultivate more Jingdong.