
WeChat is reinventing ecommerce and America is playing catch-up - vincent_s
https://www.techinasia.com/wechat-social-commerce-chinaccelerator
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jgbond
WeChat is the only viable option in China because no one else is allowed to
compete. It's a bloated piece of crap that has borderline become an OS within
an OS. "In WeChat, everything’s in one place." Know where else everything is
in one place? On your home screen where you can have lots of buttons called
apps that do specialized things in a better and more simplified manner than
WeChat can.

~~~
rxin
Wechat had intense competition in China. And putting competition aside, I find
wechat much more convenient and feature rich than other international
messaging apps (eg whatsapp).

Last time I visited China I paid for cab rides and bought electronics all
within wechat with minimal setup. The mobile commerce maturity and convenience
that comes with wechat is years ahead of what Silicon Valley offers.

~~~
maratd
> Last time I visited China I paid for cab rides and bought electronics all
> within wechat with minimal setup. The mobile commerce maturity and
> convenience that comes with wechat is years ahead of what Silicon Valley
> offers.

What? I was able to do this on AOL in the 90s. How is this progress?

~~~
rahimnathwani
You were able to pay for cab rides using AOL in the 90s? Using which device
and which software?

~~~
maratd
A cab company couldn't sit on AIM? I would pay in person once the cab arrives.
Having all your shit in one place isn't exactly a new paradigm.

~~~
leemailll
I think he means no cash. And in China people usually don't need to call for
cab service. It is more like NY style, you stand on the curbside wait for one

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swang75
I encourage those wishing to learn more from a product design perspective of
how WeChat has successfully tied together so many disparate elements to make
such a powerful product take a listen to the official WeChat product podcast
by WeChat product managers:
[https://soundcloud.com/wechatpodcast](https://soundcloud.com/wechatpodcast)

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howlingfantods
The KFC underneath my office in Shanghai doesn't even take credit card
anymore. They only accept cash and WeChatPay/Alipay.

~~~
zhte415
This is a great pain in smaller shops that have lunchtime rushes.

Queue of 5-6 people. One customer nearer the front gets out their phone,
locates the correct sub-app, scans, waits for confirmation, cashier gets
confirmation.

This process, involving phone from pocket, unlocking screen, pressing screen,
pressing screen again, scanning QR code for purchase, cashier getting
confirmation, takes around 20 seconds (mainly latency on the physical
interaction with phone part).

A cash transaction takes much less time.

There are 'bounce' apps that just mean you need to bounce against (hit)
someone else 'bouncing', but they reduce the latency little.

Faster than card, but marginally.

/rant (stand in queues a lot)

And then scanning QR codes to add the shop as a 'friend' for a 1 Yuan discount
(or demonstrate you've been a 'friend' before, more like a 0.2 Yuan discount).
Wow. This can take over a minute.

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bsder
America isn't playing catch up. The current state is _quite_ intentional.

No payment processing incumbent will _EVER_ concede the single biggest market
to another except on point of death.

~~~
colordrops
I agree with you that it is intentional. But how is that enacted? Regulatory
capture?

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ehmorris
Related: a great article series about mobile UI and app trends in China:
[http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/01/31/more-chinese-mobile-
ui-...](http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/01/31/more-chinese-mobile-ui-
trends.html)

(from a wechat product manager / Silicon Valley transplant)

~~~
jaflo
Also this one from the same author:
[http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-
ui-t...](http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-
trends.html)

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Gustomaximus
“I think Americans will be willing to press ‘buy’ if somebody gives them a
fucking ‘buy’ button.

I think this every-time I use Paypal on Ebay/Steam type services. While PayPal
have many points of criticism, I find it most unbelievable they haven't lead
the internet in one-click buying services across internet purchasing.

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home_boi
It might be a difference of taste. The bloated Yahoo home page type of website
is popular in the Asian countries but not in America. This seems to be a
similar case.

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ohthehugemanate
So is the next phase of big Internet companies to make the leap into payment
processing and banking?

* The other day we heard about apple's enormous cash stockpile, focus on security, and risk management capacity, which positions them well to become a depositor bank. * Samsung is pushing Samsung pay everywhere it can * sounds like Facebook should add a "buy" button to Pages and pull a wechat.

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dilemma
With WeChat I can:

Order and pay for materials from suppliers and have them sent to my factory

Communicate with my factory regarding product and pay them

Have the finished product shipped to my fulfillment center

Sell the product in my WeiDian shop and receive payments

and so on. WeChat is essentially digital infrastructure for both personal and
professional use.

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mtw
Too much text. Can anyone point to actual Wechant screens or video showcasing
ecommerce?

I have had WeChat installed for the past year, chat regularly but as far as
I'm concerned, the only thing you can do is buy nice animated drawings.

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Pintok
How does this matter seriously? It's been a while since I have had a problem
making payments anywhere in the world, or even on crappy e-commerce sites
anywhere in the world.

~~~
tzakrajs
I think it matters because many countries have enormous populations without
computers, which means the current state of e-commerce needs to be made mobile
friendly (and low bandwidth/high latency) to make sales. I think they are also
implying that WeChat is going to beat Facebook to the next billion users
internationally.

~~~
Pintok
I don't buy this narrative. It's been used for a while to raise funds to
"scale up".

The truth I fear is, if the bottom of the pyramid cant afford a computer, how
much do you think they are going to be spending out of their empty mobile
wallets. And then some wise ass will say but look they are spending.

The truth is they are being manipulated into spending, just like the suckers
who were tricked into mortgages they couldn't afford. Who else does one think
is clicking the infinite supply online ads.

