JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), China's second largest business-to-consumer e-commerce marketplace after Alibaba's (NYSE:BABA) Tmall, recently enlisted the help of Tencent (NASDAQOTH:TCEHY) and Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) as Singles Day (Nov. 11) -- China's equivalent of Black Friday -- rapidly approaches. JD will merge its customers' shopping history with data on Tencent's WeChat messaging platform, which has 963 million MAUs (monthly active users) worldwide. JD will use that data to make suggestions for customer purchases, while helping vendors promote their goods. JD will also grant customers online discounts at brick-and-mortar stores when they use Tencent's mobile payment app, WeChat Pay. Tencent is JD.com's largest shareholder with a 20% stake in the company.
JD.com, Tencent, and Wal-Mart Join Forces Against Alibaba -- The Motley Fool
Walmart (NYSE: WMT), JD.com (NASDAQ: JD), IBM (NYSE: IBM), and Tsinghua University National Engineering Laboratory for E-Commerce Technologies announced today they will work together in a Blockchain Food Safety Alliance that will kick off with a collaboration designed to enhance food tracking, traceability and safety in China, to achieve greater transparency across the food supply chain. The four companies will work together to create a standards-based method of collecting data about the origin, safety and authenticity of food, using blockchain technology to provide real-time traceability throughout the supply chain.
But Amazon’s rival JD.com, the second biggest online retailer in China after Alibaba, has already beaten it to the punch. JD announced that, in partnership with Hong Kong real estate developer China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd, it plans to open hundreds of unmanned convenience stores with technology reportedly more advanced than Amazon’s. Its trial shops have already been tested by the 10,000 employees at its Beijing headquarters. JD’s shops will use RFIDs and cameras with facial recognition and image recognition technology on the store ceilings to track each customer’s movement and product selection. As the store learns from a customer’s preferences over time, it will also begin to show personalized advertisements. The same tracking technology will also help store owners restock inventory more efficiently.
JD.com will open hundreds of unmanned convenience stores — Quartz