Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce powerhouse, recently partnered with Lolli, a rewards shopping app based on BTC. This will enable shoppers to earn back 5% in Bitcoin. Customers will receive Satoshis as they shop for countless items on the internet.
This really interesting partnership was announced right on China’s Singles Day, which is the biggest one-day shopping event in the world. According to the Lolli app, in 2018, over $31 billion was spent on Alibaba alone.
Lolli co-founder and CEO Alex Adelman, declared that this partnership is really important for both Alibaba and Lolli. His words:
“Our partnership allows our users to earn free bitcoin on millions of products online every day. Arguably the most important piece of this partnership is that it supports our mission of connecting the entire world through commerce.”
US Availability
Coindesk reported that this program is just going to be available for US purchases. The head of communications for Lolli, Aubrey Strobel, was quoted as saying China’s residents will not be able to participate.
Adelman said that the plan is to expand business operations to a global scale in the year 2020. The goal is to connect the US and China through commerce and Bitcoin.
FOLD
Just recently, it was reported that Fold, another Bitcoin shopping rewards application, is launching support for Airbnb. This allows Fold users to receive 3% back in BTC for every single experience and stay booked through the platform. This will work in Canada, the US, Australia, the UK, Mexico and Ireland.
When referring to Alibaba, until now, the retail giant was not friendly with Bitcoin. Even the digital payment arm of Alibaba, Alipay, declared that it is negative in connection with Bitcoin. It actually declared that it will ban all the transactions that are connected to Bitcoin. With this in mind, the partnership with Lolli might seem weird.
Conclusions
On the whole, using cryptocurrencies in ecommerce businesses is something that can only highlight that the future is bright for digital currency. There might be even specialized services, like eCommerce SEO, that will be sold with the use of Bitcoin. This is definitely the future of shopping online and it might be with Alibaba leading the train.
