The company’s executive chairman, Jack Ma, has expressed his willingness to work with the American company.
Jack Ma, the executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holdings, has now stated that he is open to working with Apple Inc through the use of its mobile payments service called Apple Pay, which recently launched in the United States and has been swimming in controversy ever sense.
At the same time as retailers shut down NFC terminals to block Apple Pay, the richest person in China is considering its adoption.
This move is part of a broader effort being made by Alibaba, as Ma readied himself to call out to Hollywood in the hopes of securing some solid media partners. At the moment, Alipay, an affiliate of Alibaba, is the largest mobile payments service in China. Apple could be considered to be direct competition if Apple Pay ever rolls out its iPhone 6 wallet service in the country.
In an interview, Ma shared his high level of respect for Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, and said he hoped to work in mobile payments together.
Ma said “I hope we can do something together,” when he had been discussing whether or not Alipay and Apple Pay could potentially find a way to partner up within the country. This, from a man who has now accumulated a mega fortune that is currently estimated to be worth around $25 billion, through his own personal stake in Alibaba, a recent entrant into the market.
Ma often travels to the United States and has spent the week visiting a number of studios in Hollywood, looking to strike up a number of content deals. He stated that “I want to come here looking for partners.” He also said that he feels as though China will one day become the largest movie market on the planet.
At the moment, Alibaba’s online and mobile payments transactions total more than the combined figures of all of those at Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. Though it has yet to establish much of a presence among retailer consumers in the United States, the focus of the company remains, for the moment, on serving its customers in China.
