JD will soon let you order burgers and rent cars thanks to mini programs

One of China’s biggest ecommerce platforms is finally adding mini programs, joining apps like WeChat and Alipay

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JD will soon let you order burgers and rent cars thanks to mini programs

Masha Borak

Published: 5:00am, 24 Apr 2020Updated: 5:14am, 24 Apr 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Chinese ecommerce giant JD.com is finally joining the country’s mini program trend with its own apps within an app. And one of the first ones is for ordering burgers.

On Wednesday, JD officially launched its mini program platform. A handful of companies have already signed on, and one of the first mini programs will come from Burger King.

That means whenever someone is shopping for a new camera in the JD app and suddenly feels hungry, quickly ordering a burger and fries will just be a few taps away. The goal is to let people do their shopping and get their fast food fix without switching between apps or downloading new ones.

Have you ever worried that ordering from Burger King wasn’t easy enough? (Picture: JD.com via WeChat)

Western tech companies have flirted with similar ideas for a long time, but they never seemed to catch on. Google launched so-called instant apps back in 2016 on Android and a feature called mini-apps for Google Search and Google Assistant last year. The company’s app store also has Google Play Instant, a feature that lets you try out games like Clash Royale without downloading the full app.

None of these features have done much to change how people interact with apps. But in China, mini programs have caught on with tremendous speed after they were introduced in Tencent’s ubiquitous chat app WeChat. Soon they will also be found in the app for JD, which Tencent owns a stake in.