>Largely because many people could not afford a computer, China skipped the PC and the credit card; smartphones were the way many people were exposed to the Internet for the first time. So today, products aren’t just mobile first, many are mobile only. Mobile payments have penetrated the country and China has become a seamless digital society.
Payment friction doesn't seem to be as hard in China as it is in the West. Beyond gambling-esque micro transactions, transactional payments don't really exist - and attempts to do so have largely failed. For example many of the ideas tried in the Podcasting section failed in the west. I comes down to
1. Our payments infrastructure really works against small transactional payments. Paying .30+2.9% on a $3 means 10% of your revenue goes to payment processing
2. There isn't a very widely penetrated payments platform that is low friction - meaning users would rather turn away than pull out a credit card. Not to mention credit card processing isn't perceived as completely safe - there's an added risk for every new site I give my credit card too that they might overcharge me or get hacked and dump my data.
China doesn't seem to have these problems, and when your customers are more willing to pay because they feel more comfortable paying for things online, you as a company can experiment with more business models. IMO, Western companies are forced to think about advertising or SaaS in order to streamline the payment process. In each section of the article, alot of the "diversification" comes down to micropayments.
I find it interesting, in the Video section, the article compares to iQiyi to YouTube, instead of Twitch, which is less reliant on Ads, but more on paid subscriptions which include emojis, game tied purchases and special messages.