Alipay App Has A Major Update Again, Wants More Control over Your Mobile Life

Alipay, the payments company under Alibaba Group, just released a major update of its mobile app, Alipay Wallet  — now only Android version is available. This version touches more aspects of your mobile life. Here are some of the new features,

• Managing your travel itineraries. Now you can add and manage airtickets, hotels and other travel related tickets within the app, and receive notifications of flights and other alerts. Alipay now partners with four Airlines including AirChina, airticket search service Kuxun and hotel service Buding.
• Checking pre-paid balance of your mobile phones and get notifications of alerts. What needs a user to do is just save a phone number there. It now partners with China Telecom, one of the three telecom operators. It’s unknown whether or when the other two telcos would join in it.
• Managing your to-do list. The feature would notify you when you need to make a payment or top up some cards or accounts, or when coupons are due.
• Managing credit card accounts, consolidating credit card bills, notifying you when payments are due, etc.

It’s not long after Alipay released its previous major update and renamed it Alipay Wallet at the end of 2012. Even the interfaces (see below) of this version is far different from the last one.

Alipay has come up with a plenty of innovations in terms of online financial offering and mobile-centered feature. Now consumers can not only make payments through the app but also manage e-coupons, itineraries and e-tickets, split bills or buy anything from a vending machine with its acoustic payment capability, etc..