China's Tencent Aims at Alibaba with Pharmacy Payments Play

Hangzhou Jiuzhou Grand Pharmacy Chain, a subsidiary of Chinese drugstore company Jo-Jo Drugstores, Inc., will allow customers to pay for products via the payment app on mobile chat app WeChat.

Jo-Jo has been quick to embrace new payment technologies. The firm already incorporates Alibaba’s Alipay as an option for consumers.

WeChat’s parent company, Tencent Holding, also touts the payment option as a way for companies to gather data, like spending behavior, from customers and engage with them through social media marketing.

The partnership is a competitive play to Alibaba, which is courting U.S. companies as part of an international expansion strategy.

Tencent is headquartered in a city of 8.9 million near Shanghai, as its headquarters. In February the Brookings Institute, a U.S. thinktank, named Hangzhou one of the world’s ten fastest growing metropolitan areas thanks in large part to its burgeoning e-commerce industry.