Alipay's entry into the bicycle-sharing industry can help enlarge the user scale and improve users' experience, but bike quality, parking spots and the total volume of bikes are still problems for bicycle-sharing companies to solve, experts noted.
Alipay, a payment application of Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services Group, announced Thursday that it would initiate barcode scanning for bicycles as of Saturday by cooperating with Chinese bicycle-sharing platforms, according to domestic news portal .
Six bicycle-sharing companies -- Ofo, Youon, Bluegogo, Hellobike, Funbike and U-bicycle -- joined Alipay. That allows users to directly unlock these companies' bikes by scanning the barcodes on bikes, the report said.
"It will greatly help enlarge the user scale of these bicycle-sharing apps by attracting users through large mobile apps like Alipay," an investor in bicycle-sharing told .
Users can avoid downloading too many apps of this kind on their phones, the investor said.
The number of bikes involved in the bicycle-sharing industry is surging, hitting 10 million at present, the investor said, of which 6 million bikes of these companies in 50 cities nationwide can use Alipay's scanning function, according to the report.
Also, the Zhima credit system of Alipay, which was developed by Ant Financial, can help users avoid putting deposits into each app, Zhang Xu, an industry analyst from Beijing-based consulting firm Analysys International, told the Global Times on Monday.
"Alipay's advantages in terms of its active user base, technology and credit can help these bicycle-sharing companies perform better in the industry, but it is not the determining factor and it will not have much influence on the market," Zhang said.
Alipay also launched the function of "riding security" for all the companies except Hellobike, through which users can get injury and death insurance, according to .
Zhang noted the industry should still focus on the quality of bikes and user experience. For example, where to put bikes for users to find them easily and how many should be put in one place.
"The industry will face a large-scale market 'shuffle' in the spring of next year with one or two big companies standing out," Zhang predicted.
