Alipay and Alibaba's membership ecosystem: the loyalty tools cross-border brands overlook
The short version: most cross-border brands treat Alibaba as a storefront and Alipay as a checkout button, and then wonder why their Chinese repeat rate is thin. The retention money in the Alibaba membership ecosystem — 88VIP, Taobao's tiered loyalty program, and Alipay's mini-program membership cards — sits one layer below the storefront, it's mostly already built for you, and foreign brands leave it on the table because nobody on the acquisition team is looking there.
I've sat in a lot of China e-commerce reviews where the whole conversation is GMV, ad ROI, and livestream slots. All acquisition, all the time. Then someone asks what the second-purchase rate looks like and the room goes quiet. The uncomfortable answer is that a brand can pour money into Douyin and Tmall traffic for a year and still own almost none of the machinery that turns a first buyer into a member, a member into a regular. That machinery exists inside Alibaba and Alipay already. Here's the part worth understanding.
Start with what 88VIP actually is
88VIP is Alibaba's paid super-membership — think of it as the Chinese consumer's Prime, except it spans more than shopping. It passed 50 million members in early 2025 and has been growing at a double-digit annual clip. Members pay a nominal fee (RMB88 once you've earned enough on the platform) for a bundle that stacks: year-round "discount on a discount" coupons, free trials of Alibaba's grocery arm Freshippo (Hema), and perks spanning 20-plus services across the ecosystem — video, food delivery, travel.
Why should a foreign brand care about a consumer's membership fee it never sees? Because 88VIP members are the highest-value cohort on the platform — they've paid to shop more, and they concentrate their spend where the member benefits point them. When your SKUs are inside the 88VIP benefit set (extra coupons, member-only pricing, exclusive bundles), you're not fighting for attention in an open feed. You're being handed to people whose whole reason for being members is to buy more. Getting your products into that benefit structure is a merchandising and account-management job, not a media buy — which is exactly why acquisition-focused teams miss it.
The tiered loyalty program is the on-ramp underneath it
In 2025 Alibaba rebuilt Taobao's loyalty into a cross-platform tiered program — ordinary members climb tiers through activity and spend, and once they hit the upper tiers (Platinum and above) they can buy into 88VIP. For a brand this matters because it's a ladder you can push customers up rather than a binary "member / not member." Points, tier-linked coupons, and member-day mechanics give you reasons to bring a buyer back before they'd naturally return — the exact window where most cross-border brands go silent and let the relationship cool.
Alipay is the CRM you didn't have to build
Here's the piece almost no foreign brand uses well. Alipay isn't just a wallet — its mini-program ecosystem runs roughly 650 million monthly active users, the second largest in China after WeChat, and it was built around exactly the tools a brand needs to retain: electronic membership cards, loyalty-point tracking, coupon and e-invoice management, store locators, appointment booking. You assemble those from components instead of building an app. Starbucks and McDonald's have run Alipay mini-programs alongside their WeChat ones for years for this reason.
The logic is simple: the moment a Chinese consumer pays you — online or, if you have physical retail, at the counter — Alipay is already open in their hand. That is the cheapest possible moment to enroll them in a membership card and start accruing points. A buyer who scans into your Alipay membership at checkout costs you nothing extra to acquire; you already earned the sale. Skip it and you've paid full price for a transaction and kept none of the relationship.
The tools, and what each is actually for
| Tool | What it is | What a foreign brand uses it for |
|---|---|---|
| 88VIP | Alibaba's paid super-membership (50M+ members) | Getting your SKUs inside a high-intent cohort's benefit set — merchandising, not media |
| Taobao tiered loyalty | Cross-platform tier ladder feeding into 88VIP | Reasons to bring a buyer back before they'd return on their own |
| Tmall store membership | Your own shop-level member base and member days | First-party-ish CRM: repeat offers, new-launch early access, member pricing |
| Alipay mini-program | Membership cards, points, coupons, store locator | Enrolling buyers at the moment of payment; light retention without an app |
| Alipay+ | Cross-border wallet network for outbound Chinese travelers | Reaching your existing Chinese customers when they're shopping abroad |
What I'd actually do with this
Not all of it, and not at once. The mistake would be reading the table above and asking an agency to "activate the whole membership ecosystem." Sequence it against where you actually are:
- If you're live on Tmall Global already: turn on shop membership and run member days before you spend another dollar on acquisition. You have buyers; you're just not asking them back.
- If you have any physical presence in China — a counter, a pop-up, a distributor's floor — stand up an Alipay membership card and enroll at payment. It's the lowest-effort retention asset in the whole ecosystem.
- Once your Tmall account has scale and a category fit, work with your Tmall Partner or account team on getting into 88VIP member benefits. This is a relationship and merchandising conversation, not a self-serve toggle, so start it early.
- Alipay+ is for later, when you have enough Chinese customers that catching them on outbound trips is worth the integration.
Measure the second purchase, not the first
The reason this layer gets ignored is that acquisition dashboards don't surface it. If your China review deck only shows GMV and ad ROI, membership will always look optional. Add three numbers and the picture changes: member enrollment rate (of buyers, how many join), repeat-purchase rate among members versus non-members, and member share of revenue. Almost every brand that starts tracking these finds the same thing — members are worth multiples of one-time buyers, and the cost of enrolling them was nearly zero. That gap is the money left on the table, made visible.
Bottom line
Alibaba and Alipay didn't just build you a place to sell — they built the loyalty and membership plumbing around it, and most of it is components you switch on rather than systems you construct. Cross-border brands overlook it because it lives one layer below the storefront, off the acquisition team's dashboard. Turn on shop membership, enroll buyers into an Alipay card at the moment they pay, climb toward 88VIP as you scale, and start reporting the second purchase. None of it is glamorous. All of it compounds.
If you're selling in China and your review meetings are still all acquisition and no retention, that's the gap I help brands close — reach out. Related reading: after-sales service is a marketing channel in China, and JD.com vs Tmall Global: which marketplace to launch on.