Bridging the Gap: How Alipay+ Is Simplifying Global Payments
The future of payments – and consumption – is digital.[1] The pandemic has accelerated the digital payment revolution, with mobile payments, especially mobile wallets, enjoying rapid growth. In 2021, mobile wallets’ share of global point-of-sale (POS) transactions exceeded $13 trillion, or 28.6% of global POS transaction value.[2] By 2025, this is expected to rise to 38.6%.[3]
The digital transformation of global payment systems is underway as mobile wallet adoption surges among merchants and consumers, particularly across fast-growing markets like Southeast Asia.[4] But technical and tactical limitations remain. To learn more about these barriers, and how to overcome them through technological innovation, we spoke to Cheng Guoming, General Manager of Global Partnerships at Alipay+, Ant Group’s suite of cross-border digital payment solutions.
Tell us about the history of Ant Group’s international solutions.
Cheng: As an innovative technology provider, Ant Group is constantly driving inclusive digital financial services. Over the past decade, we have enabled seamless ways for global merchants to accept payments – first bringing global brands to local audiences by connecting online merchants and shoppers around the world. Chinese visitors then adopted our digital-first technology to easily make mobile payments with the Chinese yuan (RMB) when traveling overseas.
Having worked side by side with dozens of e-wallet partners, we have gathered unique insights about the needs and wants of local merchants in each country, especially from small and medium businesses. These merchants can now leverage our newest digital payment solution that allows users from different countries to pay anytime, anywhere, and run marketing campaigns that effectively connect local brands with global customers.
What led to the creation of Alipay+?
Cheng: Digital technologies are essential to driving the digital economy. They’re meant to simplify and streamline business activities and daily life. However, uneven regional development and technical capabilities have led to a lack of interoperability across existing digital payment solutions, as well as differences in efficiency, availability and compatibility across technical standards and protocols. This has resulted in the fragmentation of global payment systems.
These vulnerabilities hinder the development of the digital economy, and stifle innovation and competition. Meanwhile, existing inefficiencies also increase the cost of cross-border payments, ultimately resulting in higher prices for consumers.
To solve these problems, Ant Group developed Alipay+, a suite of cross-border mobile payment and digital marketing solutions to help establish a set of business processes and promote interoperability across different payment systems, countries and regions.
How is Alipay+ different from Alipay?
Cheng: Unlike Alipay, Alipay+ is not a mobile wallet or banking app. Alipay+ joins hands with acquirers and payment services providers to connect online and offline merchants across the world with users of multiple digital payment methods. Customer relationships remain with local wallets and local acquirers, while users still pay through their payment provider’s native app.
By facilitating such business connections, Alipay+ enables local merchants to serve international consumers without any friction or downtime. Payment methods already integrated with Alipay+ include Alipay and AlipayHK from China, Touch ‘n Go Digital from Malaysia, GCash from the Philippines, Kakao Pay from South Korea and Klarna (also a leading buy-now-pay-later service) from Europe, to name a few. Alipay+-enabled merchants across the world can accept any of these digital payment methods without worrying about FX conversion, data exchange or payment flow.
Besides payments, Alipay+ also provides digital marketing solutions. Global merchants can offer users attractive deals and discounts directly through Alipay+, helping them gain and retain consumers across the world, or embed their own campaign in the checkout page, which is not possible on card-scheme platforms. By working with all stakeholders in the industry, including international organizations, regulators, digital wallet companies and financial institutions, we are trying to help lay a foundation for a global digital payment service that is more secure and convenient, with lower barriers and business costs, to benefit merchants and consumers around the world.
What are the key benefits of Alipay+ for merchants?
Cheng: Alipay+ improves payment efficiency for merchants. Through one-stop integration and a single QR code scheme across merchants’ payment terminals and mobile apps, Alipay+ provides a streamlined way for merchants to accept payments from all the digital payment tools it supports, even including payment methods that will be onboarded in the future. As Alipay+ can automatically and intelligently recognize and adapt to different payment tools, no technical change is required in merchants’ operations.
Alipay+’s global coverage connects merchants with over one billion mobile-native consumers, especially from Asia, bringing them into a familiar, secure and seamless payment flow without the hassle of complicated setups or additional hardware.
In Macao, for example, Huang's Bakery, a century-old bakery, was able to accept payments from multiple digital wallets across Asia through Alipay+. South Korean consumers could use their preferred digital wallets to pay in South Korean won (KRW), just like they do at home, while the merchant could receive payments in Macanese pataca (MOP) in real-time.
What are some of Alipay+’s milestones?
Cheng: Since launching our pilot in early 2020, Alipay+ has seen some busy years. We’ve established strong partnerships with acquirers worldwide.
For example, in Southeast Asia, we partnered with 2C2P in April this year to expand our global merchant coverage, in addition to strengthening our suite of technology and product offerings. 2C2P’s pool of merchants will be able to connect with over one billion consumers globally via Alipay+’s suite of cross-border digital payments and marketing solutions.
Singapore payment service NETS and Razer Merchant Services have also integrated Alipay+ in the past few months. A recent partnership with Touch 'n Go eWallet ensures that the Malaysian mobile wallet will be available at the most popular merchants in Singapore and Japan. It also allows Malaysian tourists to use their Touch ’n Go eWallet at any business in Singapore equipped with the Alipay+ QR code.
In Europe, we entered a new partnership with fintech company BKN301 in January, which has made Alipay+ available to 95% of San Marino’s merchants. Through whole-of-country coverage, east-west transactions that would have taken days or incurred substantial transaction fees are now cleared in seconds.
In February, we announced the integration of Alipay+ into Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry – and the fourth-largest player worldwide. This makes Worldline the first acquirer to enter a full-scale multi-country integration with Alipay+. Our enhanced payment solution will work with all Worldline terminals and applications, and rollout is underway.
What’s next for Alipay+?
Cheng: Financial inclusion is at the heart of everything that we do. We look forward to serving many more partners around the world to resolve their pain points with innovative technologies and products. In particular, Southeast Asia, a vast region with a large, urbanized, digitally savvy, yet underbanked population. Cash has been, and in many ways remains, a dominant feature of everyday life. Inclusive digital financial services are critical to both SME merchants and consumers in the region.
Any bank app, wallet or acquirer can become a partner in Alipay+’s digital payments ecosystem, to benefit from expanding their acceptance overseas, offering their users a much wider reach and adding more value for merchant clients. We will be glad to work with payment partners across the globe to create more opportunities in the digital era.
