BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba, lately acquired a 20 percent stake in OpenRice, Hong Kong's largest catering information platform, HK media reported recently..
By buying into OpenRice, Ant Financial will access to Hong Kong restaurants more easily to popularize Alipay, and extend Alipay applications from shopping and traveling to catering, thereby further leaving behind its opponent WeChat Pay HK.
OpenRice and Alipay forged a partnership in mid-2017, and jointly launched "face-to-face payment" service in September 2017 to help Hong Kong restaurants support Alipay, according to a report published on hdfin.stheadline.com on January 18.
The cooperation with OpenRice further extended the function of Alipay and Alipay HK, and showed Ant Financial's optimism about Hong Kong, said Jing Xiandong, CEO of Ant Financial.
Ant Financial hoped to, by sharing its technology, promote the further development of Hong Kong's traditional industry, provide a more profitable business model and create a more convenient lifestyle for merchants and consumers.
Qiu Guixiong, CEO of OpenRice expressed his full confidence in the cooperation, hoping that OpenRice will serve as a bridge to introduce more than 20,000 Hong Kong restaurants and catering discounts to hundreds of millions of inbound tourists and locals using Alipay through its business platform.
Apart from services including table reservation, remote queuing and dining coupon, OpenRice Biz will launch other services including take-out, e-menu and recruitment, Qiu added.(Edited by Yang Yifan, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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