W25 - New Thinking on Merchant Operations

This week, based on two reports I read, I developed some new business reflections. One was a share in the Merchant Management Weekly about a survey of food-delivery merchants. The other was Chu Jun’s summary of expert interviews at Alipay.

Overall, the gap between us and Alipay is large for two reasons. One is user scale: we serve over 6 million merchants, while Alipay has over 40 million. But this reason does not touch the root cause. I believe the fundamental reason is that from the early days of Alibaba e-commerce, Alipay supported the entire Alibaba ecosystem with a platform mindset. As the business passed important stages—PC, mobile, and the mini-program ecosystem—Alipay adapted across them. In contrast,Meituan developed business first, then built its financial platform. This means that for the financial arm to maximize platform value, it needs tofirst break business closed loops, define clear service boundaries, and consolidate service permissions. Merchants’ perception of the financial arm depends not only on the strength of our own products, but also on how deeply we cooperate with the business. This is a problem that must be addressed at the strategic coordination level.

At the same time, we should note the large growth potential for the financial arm. For example, in basic services, Alipay merchants’ payment methods when purchasing B2B services are split roughly as: Yulibao 10–20%, balance payment 40%, quick pay 40%. Our balance payments account for 1%, and quick pay is still at an early stage. In operational services, many of the formats we serve have significant room to leverage synergies based on the financial platform—for example, Kuailv has not yet integrated the merchant wallet. Procurement of supplies accounts for a substantial portion of restaurant spending. Using delivery or in-store revenue to cover procurement would improve funds closed-loop rates. In financial services, our microloans and wealth-management offerings are still at an early stage in terms of product diversity, flexibility, and customization.