Ant Group has added seven new leading e-wallets and payment apps from Asia to the Alipay+-in-China Program, bringing the total number of overseas e-wallets accepted in the Chinese mainland to 10.
Piloting the programme in late 2022 were AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China), Touch ’n Go eWallet (Malaysia) and Kakao Pay (South Korea). Now, users of mPay (Macao SAR, China), Hipay (Mongolia), Changi Pay (Singapore), OCBC (Singapore), Naver Pay (South Korea), Toss Pay (South Korea) and TrueMoney (Thailand) will be able to use their familiar home e-wallet on their own phone to enjoy seamless mobile payment experience in the Chinese mainland across Alipay’s merchant network.
Users of these e-wallets may use their own payment app wherever Alipay works, to enjoy secure, smooth and cashless payment, and transparent and competitive exchange rates. They can also enjoy additional promotional deals via Alipay+ Rewards, a digital cross-border marketing hub integrated into select wallet apps. The wallets’ teams are also providing familiar customer support to their roaming users.
Outside of China, Alipay+ covers five million merchants in 56 markets, and works with over 20 mobile payment partners across Asia which together serve over 1.4 billion consumer accounts. The programme now extends Alipay+ service to tap into China’s merchant network with tens of millions of points of sales (POS).
Travellers may also choose to bind their international bank cards to an updated international version of Alipay to enjoy mobile payment and digital life services while in China.
In addition, Ant Group is rolling out extensive merchants’ education and marketing campaigns across the Chinese mainland to welcome Asian athletes, fans and travellers.
Douglas Feagin, senior vice president of Ant Group and head of Alipay+ Cross-Border Mobile Payment Services, said expanding partners and merchant network, and enhancing digital operational capabilities of SMEs are key to Alipay+’s future strategy.
“We will invest faster and deeper in payment and digital marketing technologies to help our partners and merchants achieve robust, omni-channel growth,” said Feagin.
The total number of payments made in China through the pilot Alipay+-in-China Program wallets grew 47 times in six months between March and August 2023. Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen top as destination choices while F&B, retail and transportation are the three most common scenarios for these transactions.
