A customer pays with her Alipay app on smartphone in a KFC store in Xidan, Beijing. Photo: Yang Jing/GT

KFC stores in Beijing began accepting payments through smartphones Wednesday as the fast-food chain store added Alipay as a payment option.

Teaming up with Alipay, a payment tool of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, KFC introduced mobile payment service to more than 300 stores in Beijing on Wednesday.

With the new payment service, customers can pay for their food in a few seconds by scanning their payment codes generated by Alipay app rather than pulling out their wallets.

Before launching it in Beijing, KFC was already offering Alipay service in more than 700 stores in Shanghai and East China's Zhejiang Province. It will expand the new payment system to other cities in the Chinese mainland market, according to a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

KFC's mobile payment service is a part of its online to off-line strategy, which also includes its food order app.

However, KFC is not alone in realizing that they need to catch up with the mobile Internet fever in the Chinese market.

Its arch rival McDonald's Corp will also start mobile ordering and mobile payment services in the mainland before September and US retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc began using Alipay in some stores in the mainland in May, Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

However, compared with local competitors in catering industry, these foreign companies have been late to join the trend.

Hai Di Lao, a Beijing-based hotpot restaurant chain, adopted WeChat mobile payment tool as early as 2013 and Alipay in 2014, according to media reports.