Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

In today's weather is good. Today's weather is good.

The two major internet companies alibaba and Tencent have finally dismantled the 'walls' in the payment field.

After six months of planning, Taobao finally announced on September 4th its plans to add WeChat Pay. This means that alibaba intends to open up the e-commerce transaction entrance for over 1 billion users to Tencent.

In response to this, Taobao and Tmall stated that the company has always adhered to the open cooperation concept and actively explored interoperability with various platforms. WeChat Pay also expressed a similar attitude to Wall Street News.

It took over a decade for alibaba and Tencent to go from being enemies to friends. Behind this, the alibaba and Tencent factions have experienced contraction after years of rapid growth, while new giants like ByteDance and pdd holdings have emerged. The industry continues to iterate forward, and an ancient story takes on a new direction.

With alibaba and Tencent shaking hands and making peace, both sides are moving from establishing business barriers to form competitiveness, to a more extensive business cooperation. The industry is returning to business development logic, improving efficiency, and exploring the potential in segmented businesses.

Internet giants have become more focused and pragmatic, strengthening their core competitive advantages and bringing financial growth. The era of blindly expanding and pursuing scale is over.

A new chapter in the internet industry is about to begin.

Hand in hand

This time, Alibaba has extended an olive branch to Tencent.

On September 4th, Taobao released the "Opinions on Soliciting Feedback on Adding WeChat Pay Capabilities" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), planning to add WeChat Pay capabilities to enhance the shopping experience for consumers.

Wall Street News has learned that this wall-breaking action began half a year ago and was initiated by Taobao.

In February of this year, many users found that when placing orders and settling accounts on Taobao, there was an option to use WeChat Pay in addition to Alipay. Taobao customer service responded that this was a feature being tested and was only open to some users.

Now, after more than half a year of testing and exploration, Taobao has finally put the introduction of WeChat Pay on the agenda.

Currently, Alibaba's announcement regarding the addition of WeChat Pay is in the 'voting' phase. Alibaba has provided two options for merchants: one is to support it, and the other is to reassess it. The voting deadline is September 5th in the afternoon.

In response to this, WeChat Pay stated that the functional compatibility with Taobao platform merchants is currently being opened. Taobao has indicated that WeChat Pay services will gradually become available to all merchants on the Taobao platform after the announcement takes effect. Once merchants activate WeChat Pay, consumers can select 'WeChat Pay' as a payment method for purchasing goods from corresponding Taobao stores.

This also means that Alibaba will formally open up its core e-commerce transaction field to Tencent.

From a business perspective, the partnership between Alibaba and Tencent in the payment field will benefit the development of their respective businesses.

For Alibaba, incorporating WeChat Pay can optimize the shopping experience for consumers, aligning with their development philosophy of putting users first.

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang, who took office in September last year, wrote in his first company-wide memo that putting users first is the strategic focus. In order to create the best user experience, they must seek the broadest openness and collaboration, including with companies that traditionally compete with them.

WeChat Pay has a higher penetration rate in third and fourth-tier cities, as well as among the elderly population. The integration of WeChat Pay into Taobao is expected to bring incremental users from these markets and strengthen the preference and usage of WeChat Pay among existing users.

For WeChat, Taobao's e-commerce platform presents a huge transaction arena that will bring unimaginable market opportunities for its payment business.

According to QuestMobile data, as of December 2023, the number of Alibaba users is 1.151 billion. As the leading e-commerce platform, as early as the 2022 fiscal year, Alibaba's domestic e-commerce market GMV reached 8 trillion yuan.

It is worth mentioning that as the primary payment service provider for Taobao, Alipay has also stated that openness, collaboration, innovation, and sharing are the fundamental spirits of the Internet. The company will continue to deepen cooperation with TaoTian and create greater value through technology and product innovation.

Turning point

From the development history of the Internet industry, Alibaba and Tencent's transition from competition to collaboration is an inevitable trend of the times, but even so, it took more than ten years for Alibaba and Tencent to turn enemies into friends.

Eleven years ago, Alibaba suspended third-party application services related to WeChat, and Taobao no longer directly redirected to WeChat external links. Jack Ma and Pony Ma personally built a "Berlin Wall", and the distinction between Taobao and WeChat, the two major national apps, became clear from then on.

Four years ago, the relationship between Alibaba and Tencent eased, and the two giants began to dismantle the wall.

In the second half of 2020, advertisements for Fliggy started appearing on QQ Music. Starting in 2021, advertisements for Tencent Video, Tencent News, and other apps, as well as Taobao links in WeChat, could directly redirect to Taobao. There were rumors that Alibaba and Tencent were considering opening up their ecosystems to each other, and both stocks briefly rose by more than 3%.

In September last year, Ali Mama and Tencent Advertising further deepened their cooperation. Premium advertising traffic from WeChat video accounts, Moments, mini-programs, etc. will be delivered through Ali Mama's performance marketing platform, and will directly redirect to the shops, product details, and live streaming rooms of Taobao and Tmall sellers. The two parties also deeply integrate in terms of audience complementarity and system co-construction.

Finally, Tencent has opened up its core traffic resources to Alibaba. Now, Alibaba has also opened the door of e-commerce trade to Tencent. The two giants tacitly show their sincerity.

This is the result of Alibaba's proactive choice, but fundamentally, it is a necessary change for Alibaba to adapt to the new stage of the industry.

Of course, regulatory policies have also been helpful. In 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed to ensure the normal access of legal website links. In the same year, Alibaba was fined 18.2 billion for violating the Anti-Monopoly Law. On August 30th of this year, the regulatory authority announced that Alibaba's three-year rectification had been successfully completed and achieved good results.

The era of the huge Alibaba and Tencent ecosystems is already a thing of the past. With the rise of new giants such as ByteDance and PDD Holdings, the internet industry has entered a new round of reshuffling.

For Alibaba, the top priority is how to reestablish a foothold in the increasingly fierce e-commerce market competition, and to prove itself again among a group of competitors.

Alibaba is restarting with a zero-based entrepreneurial mindset. Last year, Alibaba carried out the largest architectural adjustment in more than 20 years, aiming to free its e-commerce, cloud computing, local life, express delivery, entertainment, and other businesses from constraints, fully compete in the market, and return to the development logic of the business itself.

Both Alibaba and Tencent are taking a step forward, and behind this, the internet industry has stepped into a new era. Younger leaders such as Zhang Yiming, Huang Zheng, and Wang Xing have already risen.

The tide of the times continues to move forward, and the internet industry is waiting for a new round of heroes in this new era.