Alipay Digital Coupon as Best Practice for Post COVID-19 Economic Recovery

Date : Jul-2020

Location: Malaysia

Organization:

Alipay,the world's leading open digital daily life services platform operated by Ant Group.

Key Takeaways:

• Government faces challenges of how to quickly revive their economies and help small businesses in particular, to protect jobs and livelihoods.
• Leverage on digital coupons as best practice to help fuel the economic recovery post COVID-19.
• Alipay looks to expand its digital daily life services platform globally by working with international partners, including e-wallet operators, banks and payment providers, to support merchants better connect with consumers around the world, enabling consumers to use their preferred mobile wallet app to enjoy the same daily life services that they could easily access at home, truly empowering digital transformation everywhere.
  

Offering:

• Alipay as a platform of Digital Daily Life Services:
• As a convenient go-to app for Chinese consumers
• Many use cases such as paying utility bills, ordering groceries, booking a doctor appointment, and making hotel reservations etc
  
• Two million Alipay mini programs
• 600 million monthly active users

Insights:

• A joint research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Fiscal sciences and Ant Group Research Institute on how consumers have been spending these coupons in Foshan, Guangdong, revealed that for every RMB 1 (RM0.60) in digital coupon, it has led to RMB 7.66 (RM4.67) in real spending, translating to actual revenue for businesses. During the five-day-long Labor Day holiday in May, digital coupons distributed through Alipay generated a total of nearly RMB 5 billion (RM3.05 billion) in retail revenue countrywide.
• 80% of the small business owners surveyed agreed that digital coupons have had a positive impact on bringing back shoppers and helping to increase their revenue.
• In a LinkedIn post, Alipay said "Payment is not the end game, but the beginning of a wide range of services that enrich daily life"

Best Practices:

• Leverage on digital coupons as best practice to help fuel the economic recovery post COVID-19.
• Ultimately, the value of digital coupons is not limited to short-term recovery as it can also bring traction and create a cluster effect to the economy in the medium and long term.
• Digital coupons also allow for industry collaboration.

Case Studies:

Bailian Group, an established department store chain in Shanghai for example distributed 80,000 digital coupons via Alipay during the Labor Day holiday which effectively led to more than RMB20 million (RM12.19 million) in sales revenue and brought over 20,000 new shoppers to the stores during the holiday.  Riding on the success, Bailian Group has since distributed another batch of over nine million digital coupons, totaling nearly RMB500 million (RM304.77 million) via Alipay - the largest coupon distribution by a single retail company in Shanghai.

Editor's comments:

• Malaysia should also adopt some forms of digital coupon to stimulate the economy, particularly the SME segment.
• Startups should leverage on Alipay mini program to penetrate the China market.

Bailian Group Digital Coupon