Records showing domain name registrations suggest that video platform Bilibili is planning to launch its own payment system. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s domain registration system shows that Shanghai Hode Information Technology Co (one of Bilibili’s affiliates) applied to register the domain names “bilibilipay.com” and “bilibilipay.cn” on January 4.
Bilibili has also posted job descriptions for development engineers and other positions related to its future payment service. The advert stated that the successful applicant would be “responsible for the core technology research and development of the Bilibili payment platform (acquisition, payment, clearing, accounting, etc.)”.
Several of China’s tech giants have recently sought to enter the payment industry, and Ctrip, Kuaishou, ByteDance and Pinduoduo have all obtained payment licenses. Currently, Alipay and Tenpay (Tencent’s third-party mobile payment service which is similar to PayPal) account for the majority of China’s third-party mobile payment market. However, with China’s payment services facing increased regulation, there may be a gap in the market for new entrants.
Internet companies are eager to develop their own payment services so that they do not have to pay the service fees of other online payment platforms. According to a financial report released by Bilibili, the company’s service fees on online payment platforms Alipay and PayPal reached 10.8 million RMB and 20.68 million RMB respectively in 2018 and 2019.
Payment services are a rapidly expanding market in China. Credit consumption tools are growing in popularity among young people with 86.6% using credit products as debt levels soar.
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