金融領域紛爭又起 微信直逼阿里巴巴

With Alibaba making waves in China’s staid financial sector, banks have every reason to be worried. But there are signs that Alibaba is also worried – about Tencent, the company behind the popular WeChat messaging app that is now muscling into the financial space, writes Simon Rabinovitch.

從阿里巴巴(Alibaba)給中國古板僵化的金融部門造成的衝擊來看，中國銀行業有充分的理由感到擔憂。不過，有跡象表明，阿里巴巴自己也有擔憂的對象，那就是騰訊(Tencent)——熱門通信應用“微信”(WeChat)背後的這家公司目前正在強力挺進金融領域。

The WeChat challenge is similar to the threat Instagram once posed to Facebook. While Alibaba has been the dominant ecommerce company on PCs, WeChat has made such big inroads on smartphones that it now has the ability to take a bite out of the mobile ecommerce market. “Alibaba’s dominance in the PC era cannot be fully carried over to the mobile era,” says Alex Wang, an analyst at internet consulting group iResearch.

微信對阿里巴巴構成的挑戰，與Instagram曾對Facebook構成的挑戰如出一轍。雖然阿里巴巴在PC（個人電腦）電子商務市場占主導地位，但微信憑藉在智能手機領域的建樹，現在已經有能力在移動電子商務市場分一杯羹。互聯網諮詢集團“艾瑞諮詢”(iResearch)分析師王亭亭(Alex Wang)說：“阿里巴巴在PC時代的霸主地位無法原封不動地延續到移動時代。”

Tencent is waging a multi-front war against Alibaba. In August, it launched a payment tool on WeChat, taking aim at Alipay, Alibaba’s lucrative online payment service. It has also tied its Yixun online shopping site to WeChat, trying to create a mobile alternative to Alibaba’s ecommerce site Taobao.

騰訊正在多條戰線向阿里巴巴發起挑戰。今年8月，騰訊針對支付寶（Alipay，阿里巴巴旗下盈利頗豐的在線支付服務）發佈了一個微信支付工具。它還將旗下的購物網站易迅(Yixun)接入微信，努力在移動端打造一個類似淘寶（Taobao，阿里巴巴電子商務網站）的購物平臺。

Just this week Tencent invested in Howbuy, an online trading platform for mutual funds, in what could be a precursor to its launching an investment product like Alibaba’s Yu’E Bao.

就在上週，騰訊注資好買基金網（Howbuy，一家共同基金在線交易平臺），這或許是它將發佈一款與阿里巴巴的餘額寶類似的投資產品的先兆。

Alibaba is fighting back. In August it announced that Taobao merchants would no longer be able to advertise QR codes, the digital bar codes, linked to external websites. Alibaba says this was done to prevent spam and fraud, but analysts believe the bigger concern was WeChat’s use of QR codes to power its payment platform, effectively taking transactions away from Taobao.

阿里巴巴方面也展開了反擊。今年8月，該公司發佈公告稱，淘寶商家不得再發含有外鏈二維碼的圖片。阿里巴巴稱，此舉是爲了防範濫發廣告信息乃至詐騙，但分析師認爲，其更大的顧慮在於微信利用二維碼強化自己的支付平臺，有效地蠶食了淘寶的交易量。

Earlier this month Alibaba also started charging PC users for Alipay transactions, but kept its payment services free on phones. With this move, it is trying to encourage its customers to shift to mobile and so prevent WeChat from gaining more ground.

本月早些時候，阿里巴巴開始向PC用戶收取支付寶交易費，但仍免收手機支付服務費。阿里巴巴希望藉此舉鼓勵其用戶轉向移動支付平臺，以阻止微信掠奪更多市場份額。

There has been mudslinging, too. Alibaba and Tencent have accused each other of writing negative reports about the other company to sully their rival’s reputation.

當然，雙方的大戰也少不了互相中傷。阿里巴巴和騰訊互相指責對方撰寫關於自己的負面報道，損害自己的聲譽。

Asked about the intensifying battle, both say they welcome it. “Competition will only serve to raise the bar in terms of user experience,” says Florence Shih at Alibaba.

但在被問及如何看待這場愈演愈烈的商戰時，兩家公司都表示對其持歡迎態度。阿里巴巴發言人施致瑀(Florence Shih)說：“競爭只會提升用戶體驗的標準。”