Wanda, Alipay sell film tickets on mobile

Wanda Cinema, one of China's biggest real estate developers, is cooperating with Alipay, the nation's largest online financial transaction platform, in a bid to free cinema goers from standing in line for tickets, according to a Tuesday report by National Business Daily.

Wanda Cinema has registered an account on Alipay Wallet, providing cinema goers with a platform to purchase tickets, choose their seats and get their tickets checked -- all on their cell phones. The ticket checking process is supported by sonic wave technology.

Nine of Wanda's Cineplexes -- in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Guangdong Province -- have already put the system into effect. These cinemas are the first batch to enjoy a complete online ticket service in China.

Although people have already been able to use their mobiles to buy tickets, they were not able to get their tickets checked without printing them out first. The complete automatic ticket service will soon go beyond the abovementioned cities into Wuhan of Hubei Province, Chengdu of Sichuan Province and Chongqing, and the business is expected to expand to other cinemas such as Warner Jinyi International Cinema.

According to Alipay, the number of Alipay Wallet users, a newly developed online financial transaction and management platform, has thus far reached 100 million. Meanwhile, the yearly growth of China's box offices has been estimated to be around 30 to 40 percent in 2013.

However, Alipay is not the only e-company to work with real economies. Tencent, one of the popular online service providers, launched its online cinema ticket service on WeChat, a mobile social network with millions of users, one day prior to the cooperation between Wanda and Alipay was announced.

Its service now covers Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Guangdong Province and will be expanded to 20 more major cities, including Chongqing and Wuhan in Hubei Province and Kunming in Yunnan Province.

According to Wang Weidong and the analysis by iResearch, an e-business consulting company, it is a good option for companies like Alipay to search for cooperation with real economies. Meanwhile, cinemas like Wanda, now challenged by online commerce, are in need of a platform like Alipay Wallet.