The Chinese media China Economic Weekly revealed that an anti-monopoly lawsuit has been filed against the Chinese take-out platform Meituan, and the Beijing Intellectual Property Court confirmed today that a case has been filed. This is another anti-monopoly lawsuit against another major technology company after the Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and Tencent, which were reported by users for using their dominant market position to cancel Alipay’s payment method, involving anti-monopoly behavior.
So far, three of the four giants in China’s technology industry, Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and Xiaomi, have been subject to antitrust penalties or investigations, including Alibaba’s anti-monopoly investigation, and Alibaba, Tencent and SF were also fined RMB 500,000 by China’s State Administration of Market Supervision in the middle of this month.
The Hong Kong-listed Meituan, which was originally rumored to be the second listing in China, is likely to follow in the footsteps of Ant and postpone its original listing plan after being subject to antitrust litigation.
It is noteworthy that Tencent is the largest shareholder of Meituan, and Tencent’s shareholding in Meituan is more than 17%, making it one of the two competing takeaway platforms in China, along with the “hungry” platform backed by Alibaba. While Meituan has been reported to have cancelled its Alipay channel, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall platforms also do not offer Tencent’s WeChat Pay channel.
According to the report, Meituan has been accused by users of using its dominant market position to cancel Alipay in its Meituan App (application) and Meituan Dianping APP, making it impossible for users to pay through Alipay.
The report quoted the notice of acceptance of civil cases of Beijing Intellectual Property Court (2020) Beijing 73 Civil No. 888, which shows that the case of Wang X v. Beijing San Express Technology Co. The case was filed on October 29, 2020.
Chen Pengfei, a lawyer at Beijing Realview Law Firm, Wang X’s client, said on Dec. 28 that Beijing Sanfast Technology Co., Ltd. and Beijing Sanfast Information Technology Co., Ltd. used its dominant market position to eliminate the Alipay pipeline in its Meituan App and Meituan Dianping App, making it impossible for consumers to pay through Alipay in the aforementioned apps.
According to Trustdata, a third-party big data research firm in China, Meituan’s market share in China’s takeaway industry has reached 68.2 percent, while Hungry Me and other platforms have a total market share of 31.8 percent.
The report pointed out that the latest version of Meituan takeaway and public review App for iPhone 12 still only has payment methods Meituan payment, WeChat payment and Apple Pay, no Alipay. iPhone XS MAX, iPhone 7 and other series of cell phones of the latest version of the above Meituan App, Alipay payment methods are folded and hidden.
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