Alibaba

[freedom]

i tihnk you are not marrying the habits and acceptance of the mobile platform with the behavior of a new group of people that have a different set of values.

I just think that the service/product they provide can be easily copied by any competitor or even national banks, if they put their mind it; and, it is easily threatened by changes in PRC monetary policy. It also doesn't seem to be something only Alibaba is good at/can do, per se.

It has potential, but a simple SWOT analysis shows significant weakness in their strategy.

Don't get me wrong, if I am a Chinese national, I may put some of my free cash in there if I could, provided there is indeed no withdrawal fees etc, while the party last. However, once a renown national bank comes up with a similar product, I would transfer my cash to the bank instead in a heartbeat.

Alibaba does have unmatched strength against competitors(not banks as Alibaba is not a financial service provider, but Tecent/Baidu or even security/brokerage companies). That's Alipay. The service Alipay provides turns the money invested almost like cash. You can buy quite a lot of stuff within Alibaba(Taobao and Tmall) and you can use it to pay plenty of service providers such as credit cards and some bills. For Tecent and Baidu, that's their weakness. It would turn away a lot of people because the only way to use the money invested is to transfer it back to your bank account and then use it.

People put their money into the banks not just because the banks give interest and safety of deposit, also because the banks provide services such as bill payment, cash withdrawal(domestic and oversea) and NETS in the case of Singapore.