In the past few weeks, Douyin made two moves that tell me one thing: ByteDance is serious about becoming a payment company, not just an ad company.
First, Apple’s App Store in China started testing Douyin Pay as a payment option. It showed up in a gray rollout around August 12, 2025. Users with access can set Douyin Pay as their default for App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, and AppleCare+ purchases. This puts it in the same slot as Alipay, WeChat Pay, and credit cards.
The timing is no accident. On July 7, 2025, the People’s Bank of China renewed Douyin Payment Technology’s license as “long-term effective” — one of only 13 institutions to get that status in the first batch. Then in January 2025, Douyin Pay’s registered capital jumped from 1.5 billion yuan to 31.5 billion yuan, a 20x increase that made it the fourth-best-capitalized payment firm in China behind only Tenpay, PayPal’s Beibao, and Du Xiaoman.
But the bigger story is offline.
Around December 12, 2025, Douyin launched “Douyin Danzhu” (Douyin Pay at Store), a feature that lets users scan a merchant’s dedicated payment device through the Douyin app and pay without leaving the app. It supports WeChat Pay, Alipay, and Douyin Pay as settlement options. The trial runs in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, covering restaurants, convenience stores, supermarkets, and lifestyle services. Chain stores and local small businesses are both on board.
Ive heard mixed results from merchants. One hotpot restaurant manager in Shanghai told Tech Planet that young customers who watch food videos on Douyin scan the payment code immediately instead of switching apps, especially when there is a coupon attached — 160 yuan for a 180 yuan voucher, for example. A convenience store owner in Hangzhou said the opposite: after two weeks, almost nobody used it.
The strategy makes more sense if you look at the timeline. ByteDance bought its first payment license in August 2020 by acquiring Wuhan Hezhong Yibao. In April 2024, it paid 1.4 billion yuan for Hailian Jinhui’s subsidiary, which holds the critical “bank card acquiring” license needed for offline merchant services. The deal was still pending regulatory approval as of late 2025, but Douyin launched the feature anyway.
Douyin is also testing a “tap to pay” NFC feature internally, which is the same mechanism Alipay has been pushing with its “Peng Yi Xia” (Tap & Pay) campaign since August 2024. Alipay claims its tap-to-pay rollout is six times faster than its 2019 face-payment initiative, covering over 1,000 malls nationwide. Alipay’s share of offline payment transactions is roughly 20% against WeChat’s 80%, and it really wants to change that.
What does this mean? For now, Douyin Pay at store is not a WeChat or Alipay killer. The merchant base is tiny, and the incentives (subsidies, coupons) are what drive usage, not habit. But Douyin has something the other two dont: it owns the discovery-to-purchase funnel end to end. You watch a video of a restaurant, get a coupon, go to the store, and pay in the same app. That closed loop is what Alipay tried and mostly failed to build with its social features, and what WeChat has but never fully monetized.
Xiaohongshu is watching too. In November 2025, it quietly bought a payment license of its own for 148 million yuan, acquiring Dongfang Electronics Payment. Xiaohongshu’s 2024 GMV reportedly passed 400 billion yuan, and it was paying around 28 billion yuan in transaction fees to third-party providers. That alone justifies the license cost.
Three superapps are now in the payments game. WeChat owns the social graph. Alipay owns the financial utility. Douyin owns the content-to-commerce pipeline. The question is which one translates its advantage into sticky payment behavior without annoying users. So far, none of them have a great answer.