On April 24, 2025, Alipay unveiled key developments at its Alipay Tap Ecosystem Conference, marking a pivotal moment for the product. Since its launch 321 days prior, Alipay Tap has expanded to over 400 cities across China, surpassing 100 million payment users—a growth trajectory that has outpaced even the historic rise of Yu’e Bao. With this milestone, Alipay Tap is increasingly viewed as another breakthrough innovation from Ant Group.
Compared to Alipay’s original QR code payment system—which required users to open the app and manually generate a code—Alipay Tap significantly simplifies the process. Users now only need to unlock their phones and tap to pay. This frictionless interaction has become a defining feature and a powerful first impression for new users.
Yet the strategic ambition behind Alipay Tap extends far beyond digital payment. Alipay announced that it has partnered with ecosystem collaborators to launch over 300 application scenarios. These include shared bike rentals, medical appointments, identity verification, membership benefit redemption, and food ordering—highlighting Tap’s role as a gateway to a broader spectrum of offline digital services.
Technologically, Alipay Tap differentiates itself from traditional QR codes and earlier NFC implementations through superior convenience, compatibility, and scalability. In an era defined by mobile internet penetration, Alipay Tap is positioning itself as the next-generation offline interaction interface. While Apple’s NFC-based approach has seen moderate success in Europe and the U.S., its adoption in China has been limited. Alipay, in contrast, is rapidly accelerating its deployment domestically.
According to Li Jiajia, Vice President at Ant Group and head of the Alipay Tap project, the objective is not to replace QR codes or compete for market share within traditional payment channels. Instead, the initiative seeks to reimagine and rebuild broader service-based entry points—areas that remain underdeveloped and open to innovation. Li herself initially viewed Tap as a narrow payment solution, only later recognizing its potential as a service integration platform.
The first live transaction using Alipay Tap occurred on June 7, 2024, at Shanghai’s Joy City Mall. Devices were deployed across more than 200 retail stores to test signal stability, transaction speed, success rates, and user experience under real-world conditions. Early feedback on social media was skeptical. However, Joy City quickly observed measurable benefits—most notably, the ability to distribute and verify coupons across all stores with a single tap, resulting in significantly improved customer conversion rates. This outcome solidified internal confidence in the platform’s broader potential.
Importantly, payment alone does not account for the explosive user adoption seen over the past year. With QR code payments already well-optimized in China, further growth now hinges on deeper user engagement. For merchants, key performance indicators have shifted to metrics such as private domain growth, user activation, and transaction conversion.
In response, Alipay has integrated membership registration and coupon distribution directly into the Alipay Tap backend. New users can register as members within three seconds and immediately receive benefits such as discounts and loyalty points. Alipay also incentivizes adoption by subsidizing merchants, distributing coupons directly to users through the Tap platform.
Early merchant feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. FamilyMart, which operates nearly 3,000 stores nationwide, fully adopted Alipay Tap and launched a Tap Consumer Festival in late 2024. As a result, its membership registration efficiency doubled year-over-year. Similarly, Juewei Food deployed the system across 10,000 stores and saw a 4.7-fold increase in sales attributed to member-based payments within two weeks of launch.
Alipay’s expansion strategy has focused first on large retail chains to create a demonstration effect, before scaling to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where cost remains a significant barrier. To accelerate adoption, Alipay has provided most Tap devices free of charge. At the recent conference, Ant Group CEO Han Xinyi announced an additional ¥10 billion investment to support merchant onboarding and infrastructure development.
From a technical standpoint, Alipay Tap offers merchants a fully integrated terminal solution, bundling hardware with cashier SaaS systems, service invocation capabilities, and marketing tools. This backend infrastructure is compatible across smartphone brands, payment platforms, and mini-programs. For end users, the interaction remains simple: a single phone tap unlocks a wide array of services.
In the long term, Alipay Tap aims to serve as a ubiquitous digital key for everyday activities—from unlocking vending machines and renting power banks to accessing public services and enabling gated community deliveries.
The product’s rapid uptake reflects the broader momentum behind China’s HarmonyOS ecosystem. Lens Technology, a major ODM supplier, initially forecasted production of 50,000 Tap units. However, surging demand quickly outpaced projections, with orders multiplying several times over—underscoring strong market traction.
A complete industrial supply chain is now emerging. Fudan Microelectronics, China’s leading NFC chip manufacturer, supplies Boost Tag chips and has introduced a dedicated chip line for Alipay Tap, offering faster, more efficient communication with a claimed 99.99% success rate. Terminal devices are provided by Orbbec and Landi, while national deployment is supported by Lakala and Newland across sectors such as retail, food service, and transportation. Xinguodu acts as a key acquiring partner for promoting Tap adoption.
With approximately 70% of new smartphones in China already equipped with NFC chips, Alipay Tap is well-positioned to expand into sectors including transportation, logistics, healthcare, IoT, and smart city infrastructure.
Notably, despite its technical capability, WeChat Pay has yet to engage meaningfully in the NFC space. This has allowed Alipay to emerge as the de facto standard-bearer, enjoying a first-mover advantage in shaping this new mode of offline digital interaction.
Source: Sina, Alipay, Sohu, Asia Tech Daily
