Ant Group Uses Alipay+ To Broaden Global Footprint

This digital functionality enables clients to use their local payment apps to make mobile payments in other countries. This allows them to avoid switching to other apps and adding financial details to unknown apps. CNBC quoted the senior vice president of Ant Group and president of Ant International, Douglas Feagin, who said:

What we found is that people want to use their home e-wallets when they travel abroad. So they don’t want to have to load their card into another app that they don’t know as well.

According to CNBC, the company’s international segments launched Alipay+ in 2020. Alipay+ enables travellers to make payments in China by scanning the relevant QR codes. Based on the reported success of this utility, Ant Group identified an opportunity to expand beyond Asia into the Middle East, Latin America and Europe.

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Feagin said that an increase in Alipay activity outside China justifies this expansion. However, he noted that Chinese tourists generated most of this activity and further commented:

We had the benefit that Alipay was already accepted in many merchants around the world so one of our first steps was to convert those merchants to Alipay+ merchants. So instead of just accepting a wallet, they can accept many wallets.

CNBC reported that Alipay is currently used by 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions. Records show that to date, 1.5 billion people use Alipay.

To realise its intended expansion, Ant Group invested in several companies, including 2C2P, a Singapore-based payments organisation, and South Korea’s Kakao Pay Corp. (377300.KS).