Apple Pay Comes To Alibaba’s US Marketplace

In case the E-commerce giant in China hasn’t proved it’s place in the E-commerce shopping marketplace yet, its new mobile apps might give it another edge. And they come equipped for Apple Pay.

Alibaba’s boutique shop 11 Main now has new mobile apps designed to attract more shoppers to its site, USA Today reported Thursday (Nov. 13).  While questions have been raised about Alibaba’s desire to draw business away from the U.S. retail marketplace, Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma has said Alibaba wants to be a player in the global E-commerce space.

11 Main also offers more than 1 million products from thousands of U.S. merchants, according to the USA Today article, and the mobile apps will help expand their presence even more. Shoppers on 11 Main can use Apple Pay, which is another indication that Alibaba may partner with Apple Pay soon, though negotiations are still in the works.

The June launch of 11 Main has given it its “entree to the U.S. market,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Williams said in the USA Today article. “It represents a real-world environment for them to see how the U.S. consumer operates and what they are interested in,” he said. By bringing the store to a shopping app, it opens us the smartphone market for its boutique items in both the U.S. and China.

“Our strategic priorities are to continue to maximize our growth with China’s relatively under-penetrated online shopping population and to increase opportunities for merchants in the U.S. and internationally to sell their goods into China,” Jim Wilkinson, senior vice president of international corporate affairs for Alibaba Group said in the article. Alibaba’s mobile app addition for its boutique may come from the strong growth the company has seen for mobile active users on its mobile commerce apps. The app was designed for Apple and Android devices and will be offered as an iPad app this year.

In Alibaba’s third-quarter earnings call, Ma said on its China retail marketplace, sales increased 49 percent to $380 billion and mobile active users on the mobile commerce apps hit 217 billion users. Alibaba’s mobile monetization rate also rose 1.87 percent in the September quarter from 1.49 percent the previous quarter, but this could continue to grow as Alibaba added 29 million mobile users just in the past three months. Alibaba’s Singles’ Day growth is also motivation to enter the mobile app market. This year, Alibaba sold $9.34 billion in goods on Tmall, compared with $5.7 billion last year.