Apple, Alibaba eyeing mobile payments union

LAGUNA BEACH (California) — Put Apple’s Mr Tim Cook and Alibaba’s Mr Jack Ma under the stars together and a partnership just might bloom.

Those were the signals from both men last night at the WSJDLive tech conference in Laguna Beach, California, as they took to the stage separately and spoke about working together on mobile payments.

“I’m very interested in that,” Mr Ma, founder of the Alibaba Group, said when asked whether it made sense for his company’s Alipay Wallet mobile system to team up with Apple Pay. “As always, a good marriage needs both sides working hard. I respect Apple and respect Tim very, very much.”

The Apple chief executive officer, who was sitting in the audience, took to the stage afterwards and was asked about the possibility of a partnership. “We’re going to talk about getting married later this week,” Mr Cook said. “I love what he’s done, I think he’s a brilliant guy. I think he has brilliant people at the company, so if we can find some areas of common space, I love it. I love partnering with people like that.”

The talk of partnership follows Mr Cook’s visit to China last week, in which he discussed plans to more than double the number of stores Apple operates in the Greater China region in the next two years to 40 as the company expands its business.

Apple’s effort to replace the physical wallets of consumers with its mobile payment system ran into a roadblock when CVS Health and Rite Aid disabled the technology in their pharmacies last week.

The retailers are among 220,000 United States merchants that already have technology in place to read the short-range wireless signals that enable customers of Apple Pay or similar services to make a purchase by waving their smartphones, but they were not among those named as accepting Apple Pay when the iPhone maker revealed its system last month.

The mobile version of Alibaba’s payment system Alipay Wallet handles 45 million transactions a day and has 190 million active users, Mr Liu Lejun, general manager of the mobile business unit, said this month.

Alipay Wallet products allow users to pay hospital fees and rent cars in Beijing and Hangzhou, stated a display at a conference in Beijing. BLOOMBERG