KFC China has teamed up with Alibaba’s payments division Alipay to allow Chinese customers to pay for the fast-food with their mobile phones.
As part of the deal an estimated 5000 KFC outlets across 900 cities in the country will now accept mobile payments for their in-store purchases.
Paying for the orders will involve scanning at the cash register the Alipay QR or barcode on the customer’s smartphone. The transaction is timed at taking two seconds or less. The customers will also be able to benefit from special deals and promotions via the KFC China smartphone app.
This partnership is part of Alibaba’s big push to provide online-to-offline (O2O) services – whereby customers use their smartphones to pay for everything from travel to food.
KFC becomes the third major retailer to work with Alipay after Walmart and French supermarket chain Carrefour. Walmart started working with Alibaba’s payments service in May when it began offering the Alipay option to its 25 stores in Shenzhen.
“The cooperation with KFC China signifies the milestone on how Alipay will revamp offline payments across the country, and we are working closely with KFC China to provide better deals and services for customers,” said Fan Zhiming, president of Alibaba’s Ant Financial payment business unit
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