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China-based Alibaba Group has begun offering payment services from Tencent’s WeChat on a number of its apps, after the government ordered tech firms to stop blocking each other’s services and links.

Local tech blog 36Kr reported that users of Alibaba’s food delivery app Ele.me, luxury goods app Kaola and e-book app Shuqi can now purchase goods via WeChat Pay. Alibaba’s used-goods marketplace app Xianyu and supermarket app Freshippo have also applied for WeChat Pay integration, the tech blog said.

Alibaba confirmed the contents of the report to Reuters. Previously, the main way users could make payments on those apps was via Alipay, from Alibaba’s financial affiliate Ant Group.

Earlier in September 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it had asked internet companies to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other’s links and services on their sites. Such practices prevented app users from seamlessly jumping to services between rival companies, retailnews.asia explains

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