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Apple lets Siri integrate with Alipay, one of China’s most popular payment platforms
Move is a signal of Alipay’s dominance when it comes to payments in China
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Apple will now allow Siri to support voice commands for Alibaba’s Alipay -- in a tacit acknowledgement that local players are miles ahead when it comes to payments in China.
It means users will be able to tell Siri to open the Alipay payment screen directly, instead of having to tap open the app and then navigate to the page.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)
Though it might seem like a simple software update, the move is a big departure for Apple, which has been pushing its Apple Pay product in China’s booming mobile payment market -- worth a staggering 50 times the size of the US market.

It illustrates the sheer dominance of established players, with Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent's WeChat Pay making up 90 percent of the market.
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