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Ant Group’s payment services platform Alipay is most trusted brand in China, new survey by US firm finds
- More than half, or 53 per cent, of consumers surveyed in China said they use Alipay daily, according to the Morning Consult report
- The survey found that the proportion of Alipay users is larger among young people, 55 per cent of millennials and 61 per cent of Gen Z consumers
Coco Fengin Beijing
Alipay, the mobile and online payments service operated by Ant Group, is the most trusted brand in mainland China, according to a survey published on Wednesday by US-based global decision intelligence company Morning Consult.
More than half, or 53 per cent, of consumers surveyed in China said they use Alipay daily, according to Morning Consult, which has no ties with the South China Morning Post. The survey found that the proportion of Alipay users is larger among young people, 55 per cent of millennials and 61 per cent of Gen Z consumers.
The Alipay app, which has about 1.2 billion users globally, is one of the most widely used digital wallets in China. Alipay and rival payments service WeChat Pay, operated by Tencent Holdings, have a combined market share of more than 90 per cent in the world’s second-largest economy, where the impetus has been to establish a cashless society.
The Morning Consult survey, which covered more than 11,000 consumers in the world’s 10 largest economies between March and April this year, was undertaken to find out the most trusted brand in each market. Johnson & Johnson’s Band-Aid topped the US, while the world’s largest carmaker Toyota Motor, ranked No 1 in Japan. PayPal, Google and Samsung Electronics are the most trusted brands in Germany, India and South Korea, respectively.
In six of the 10 markets where the survey was conducted, the most trusted brands were established locally.
“A bad customer service experience and deteriorating product quality were among the top reasons that global consumers lost trust in brands,” the Morning Consult report said.
The report found Chinese consumers to have the highest level of “automatic trust”, with 64 per cent of those surveyed saying they tend to trust companies until they do something bad. By contrast, consumers in France have the lowest level of trust, or 35 per cent, according to the survey.
Financial technology giant Ant did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The firm is an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the Post.
The latest recognition of Alipay reflects the payment platform’s success in expanding its ecosystem of partners across mainland China.
In March 2020, Alipay started an ambitious three-year plan to become digitally entrenched in the businesses of 40 million service providers across the country. This involves opening up the Alipay platform as an online gateway for these enterprises – in industries ranging from consumer retail, food and drink, and transport to hotels and accommodation, and medical services – to increase efficiency and serve more consumers by 2030.
Alipay was launched in 2003 to support the growing operations of Alibaba’s Taobao Marketplace. It has since become part of Alibaba affiliate Ant, which came under a state-guided restructuring process after its initial public offering in Shanghai and Hong Kong was called off in 2020 amid regulatory uncertainty.
Both Alipay and WeChat Pay now also offer e-CNY, China’s central bank digital currency, as a payment option.
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