Alibaba to open up deals app in concession to antitrust campaign

A food delivery worker exits the campus of the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd headquarters in Hangzhou, China. Alibaba is planning to set up a Taobao Deals lite app on Tencent’s WeChat and has already invited some merchants to participate, according to the people. — Bloomberg

China’s largest e-commerce operator Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is planning to offer its fast-growing bargains service on rival Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat messaging platform in a major concession to regulators seeking to to crackdown on monopolies in the Internet sphere, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Alibaba and Tencent have long excluded each other’s services from their platforms, creating so-called walled gardens within their ecosystems. Now, Alibaba is planning to set up a Taobao Deals lite app on Tencent’s WeChat and has already invited some merchants to participate, according to the people. Selling through the WeChat super-app means the merchants will now be able to accept payments made through WeChat Pay, a service that had been barred on Alibaba’s marketplaces, the people said, asking not to be identified as they weren’t authorised to discuss the information.