Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it is developing virtual-reality-enabled mobile paymenttechnology－as the e-commerce giant bets big on VR-driven shopping for future growth and iswrestling with arch rival Tencent Holdings Ltd for supremacy in the booming digital paymentmarket.
The Hangzhou-based company //confirm/i/ied to China Daily on Monday that it is working on thefuturistic technology, which could allow users to pay bills in a 3-D virtual world by nodding theirheads or making other gestures to log in payment accounts.
The revelation of its latest move comes shortly after the company offered a preview of its Buy+virtual store. Wearing a headset and with two hand-controllers, consumers can get into a 360-degree virtual environment where they can hold, feel and try on bags, shoes and lingerie asthey do in real life.
Consumers won't－yet－be able to pay using VR.
"Consumers of Buy+ can shop in a virtual world, but they will still have to take their headsets offand go back to the real world to pay bills," said Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of Alibaba.
"We are working on the VR-driven payment tool to offer a real immersive and complete VRshopping experience," added Ant Financial, the owner of Alipay, the most popular mobilepayment tool in China.
The company declined to disclose when the new technology will be released, but local mediasite yicai.com quoted an Alibaba employee as saying that it could possibly be launched assoon as the end of September.
In the first quarter of 2016, China's third-party mobile payment tools handled transactionsworth more than 5.9 trillion yuan ($885.8 billion), up by 110 percent from a year earlier, datafrom internet consultancy Analysys International show.
Alibaba dominated the industry with a 63 percent market share while Tencent trailed behind itwith its WeChat Payment accounting for 23 percent.
Experts said the difficulty of developing VR-enabled payment tools lies in how to ensuresecurity while keeping it easy to use.
Li Chao, an analyst at research firm iResearch Consulting Group, said it would be hard topersuade shoppers as well as sellers to accept VR-enabled payment tools. "The VR industry isstill in infant stage. VR games are still a niche, let alone VR payment. Also when it comes tofinancial payments, consumers value security more than just being cool," Li said.
