Open Sesame! By Camille Guo
(Photo) Threatpost. Inc
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magine if a company like Amazon swallowed eBay, Apple News, Groupon, American Express, Citibank and Youtube -- that is Alipay. Owned by Ant Financial, an affiliate of the massive Alibaba corporation, Alipay is sometimes called a super app. The app’s home screen is neatly organized with icons, some of which are entirely third-party companies such as Airbnb, Uber or Uber’s Chinese rival Didi. Through the eyes of Lazarus Liu, we get an inside look of how Alipay affects one’s lifestyle in China. When he moved back to China in 2015, after studying logistics in the United Kingdom for three years, he noticed the drastic change. Society had converted into a cashless economy where everyone paid for everything with their phones. One day, after watching a woman his mother’s age pull out her phone to pay for her groceries, he decided to sign up. The first step was to get an Alipay ID, in which Liu had to input his cell phone number and scan his national ID card. He did so reflexively as Alipay has created a reputation for trust and reliability with its
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slogan as an accurate gist: “Trust makes it simple.” Liu found the app so convenient that he began using it multiple times a day. Alipay helped him pay for his breakfast through a food delivery app. His parking could be paid for through Alipay’s My Car feature, in which he had to add his driver’s license, as well as the engine number of his Audi. The options were limitless. He booked doctors’ appointments on the app, allowing him to skip the infamous lines of China’s hospitals. The mobile payment services of Alipay no longer required Liu to bring his wallet when he left the house. One day, a new icon appeared on Liu’s Alipay home screen. It was called Zhima Credit (Sesame Credit). The name, like that of Alipay’s parent company, emblemizes the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, in which the words “open sesame” magically unsealed a cave full of treasure. When Liu tapped the icon, he was greeted by an image of the Earth. The text underneath read, “Zhima Credit is the embodiment of personal credit. It uses big data to conduct an
