Tencent, Alibaba open mobile payments battle via vending machines

The first shots of a brewing mobile e-commerce war between Tencent and Alibaba may have been fired from the unlikeliest of platforms: vending machines.

Tencent, the mainland's largest listed internet firm, and the country's e-commerce giant Alibaba have recently been waging a quiet battle for the hearts, minds and wallets of smartphone-toting consumers who patronise the vending machines inside Beijing Subway train stations.

Both internet firms have separately formed alliances to roll out "smart" vending machines that support their respective mobile e-commerce applications, which subscribers can download on their smartphones and use to buy drinks, snacks and other goods from the machines.

Asked which side was winning, Sandy Shen, the research director for consumer services at technology advisory firm Gartner, said yesterday: "The dust has not yet settled. It remains to be seen whether the buying experience is good for consumers and whether security [of the different mobile e-commerce payment systems] can be sufficiently addressed by the players."

In an aggressive launch last month, Shenzhen-based Tencent teamed with Ubox, a vending-machine manufacturer, to install about 300 drinks machines across the Beijing Subway network and support transactions by subscribers to the WeChat social mobile-messaging app, known as Weixin on the mainland.

Alibaba, however, was the first mainland internet company to adopt apps-friendly vending machines for mobile e-commerce. A spokeswoman said: "We intend to cover more than 90 per cent of China's vending-machine market."