金融领域纷争又起 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.

从阿里巴巴(Alibaba)给中国古板僵化的金融部门造成的冲击来看，中国银行业有充分的理由感到担忧。不过，有迹象表明，阿里巴巴自己也有担忧的对象，那就是腾讯(Tencent)——热门通信应用“微信”(WeChat)背后的这家公司目前正在强力挺进金融领域。

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.

微信对阿里巴巴构成的挑战，与Instagram曾对Facebook构成的挑战如出一辙。虽然阿里巴巴在PC（个人电脑）电子商务市场占主导地位，但微信凭借在智能手机领域的建树，现在已经有能力在移动电子商务市场分一杯羹。互联网咨询集团“艾瑞咨询”(iResearch)分析师王亭亭(Alex Wang)说：“阿里巴巴在PC时代的霸主地位无法原封不动地延续到移动时代。”

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.

腾讯正在多条战线向阿里巴巴发起挑战。今年8月，腾讯针对支付宝（Alipay，阿里巴巴旗下盈利颇丰的在线支付服务）发布了一个微信支付工具。它还将旗下的购物网站易迅(Yixun)接入微信，努力在移动端打造一个类似淘宝（Taobao，阿里巴巴电子商务网站）的购物平台。

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.

就在上周，腾讯注资好买基金网（Howbuy，一家共同基金在线交易平台），这或许是它将发布一款与阿里巴巴的余额宝类似的投资产品的先兆。

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.

阿里巴巴方面也展开了反击。今年8月，该公司发布公告称，淘宝商家不得再发含有外链二维码的图片。阿里巴巴称，此举是为了防范滥发广告信息乃至诈骗，但分析师认为，其更大的顾虑在于微信利用二维码强化自己的支付平台，有效地蚕食了淘宝的交易量。

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.

本月早些时候，阿里巴巴开始向PC用户收取支付宝交易费，但仍免收手机支付服务费。阿里巴巴希望借此举鼓励其用户转向移动支付平台，以阻止微信掠夺更多市场份额。

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.

当然，双方的大战也少不了互相中伤。阿里巴巴和腾讯互相指责对方撰写关于自己的负面报道，损害自己的声誉。

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.

但在被问及如何看待这场愈演愈烈的商战时，两家公司都表示对其持欢迎态度。阿里巴巴发言人施致瑀(Florence Shih)说：“竞争只会提升用户体验的标准。”