In fact, Alipay is quite an early entrant in the AR sector. When Pokemon Go swept all over the world last year, Alipay already launched its own various AR ; AR functions. For example, users could open their Alipay APP and scan the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Fu (the Chinese character for happiness) during the Spring Festival and collect red envelopes or discount vouchers.

Although several bugs came up during these activities, a large number of users were still quite attracted to the idea AR. Statistics suggest that 168 million users participated in the Fu collecting activity, though many of them cheated, since they found the loopholes in the activity and replace real objects with photos.

Last December, Alipay launched its LBS-based AR Red Envelope function.

Within a year, Alipay managed to not only spread the idea of AR ; Scan to ordinary users and improve its algorithm at the same time, but also demonstrated its ability to serve ordinary users and business owners.

To be specific, Alipay wants to spread the idea of AR ;Scan to a degree that it is as popular and normal as QR code scanning. Imagine the huge ambition of Alipay.

Besides, Alipay has gradually attempted to demonstrate its ability to serve business owners. Whether through LBS-based or Scan ; AR, Alipay has been making attempt to integrate brands, discount vouchers and red envelopes to AR games. To a degree, Alipay’s AR Open Platform will certainly be Embraced by business owners.

In other words, Alipay’s AR Open Platform may bear the same as Ant Financial. Today, Ant Financial has already opened various accesses to its business owners, including mobile payment, marketing and voucher, etc. For internet giants, it’s better to open the platform to various business owners than do everything by oneself.

How will the future Mini Program competition look like?

Although many industry analysts have pointed out that the core of WeChat’s Mini Program lies in conNECting offline scenarios, WeChat Mini Program’s several updates and related startup projects have both demonstrated that online scenarios remain the major battleground.

How come? Aren’t they aware of the potential of Mini Program? WeChat did attempt to connect offline scenarios via Mini Program, but it didn't have the ability to set up QR codes offline. Therefore, it turned to business owners for help, an industry practitioner commented in a previous report on TMTPost.

For example, WeChat Mini Program has teamed up with various offline business stores and shared bike platforms to set up QR codes, offline gateway to its Mini Program. In fact, accessibility to users is key to the development of Mini Program.

To put it simply, at first, WeChat attempted to expand the offline user scenario of Mini Program, but it overestimated developers’ ability. After all, internet practitioners are better at product development and technology than grabbing offline scenarios or setting up QR codes. This is why WeChat gradually lowered the difficulty to develop Mini Programs, allowed WeChat Official Account owners to attach Mini Programs to their OAs, allowed users to find recent Mini Programs through the latest update. WeChat’s sole goal, however, is to improve the accessibility of WeChat Mini Programs.

From this perspective, Alipay attempts to surpass WeChat by better getting access to ordinary users.