China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd is in talks to combine its e-commerce business with rival online retailer JD.com, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The companies are considering several options, including Tencent getting a 6 percent stake in JD.com in exchange for merging its less-popular online shopping operations with JD.com’s more established platform, the report cited one source as saying.
SourceChinese Internet giant Tencent, which is best known for its wildly popular messaging service WeChat (known as Weixin in China), is reportedly in talks to combine its e-commerce operations with online retailer Jingdong. Bloomberg reports that Tencent may integrate its online shopping operations in return for a 6 percent stake in Jingdong, which owns the e-commerce site JD.com. Tencent owns Chinese retailing site 51Buy.com (known as Yixun in China). A combination of both e-commerce businesses would no doubt lead to a stronger push for e-commerce on WeChat. It’s still an early start to the year, but Tencent has already been taking steps to do so via a $50 million investment in ‘China’s Yelp’ announced yesterday, as well as a logistics deal last month. In the meantime, JD.com would likely benefit from increased traffic via WeChat, a boon for the company that just filed for a $1.5 billion IPO last month.
