Alipay partners with banks and payment providers to drive European expansion

The partnerships with BNP Paribas, Barclays, UniCredit, and SIX Payment Services will enable an additional 930,000 merchants to join Alipay’s European network. Alipay users will be able to conduct transactions at points-of-sale via the barcode-scanning method they are used to in China.

Alipay will work with:
• BNP Paribas to facilitate Alipay payments via the bank’s merchant network in France, and later elsewhere in Europe.
• Barclays to provide Alipay customers with digital ways to pay in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. A later phase of the partnership would see Alipay customers being able to pay using Barclaycard’s point-of-sale (POS) solution.
• SIX Payment Services, the pan-European payments provider, to integrate Alipay services into SIX’s payment application, facilitating POS and e-commerce payments for Alipay users throughout the SIX network.
• UniCredit to launch Alipay in Italy next year.

Alipay serves its users in a variety of online and in-store payment scenarios, from restaurant and utility bills to duty-free and O2O purchases. As of the end of the third quarter of 2016, excluding mainland China, it had a network of close to 100,000 retailers in 70 countries and regions.

Alipay first entered Europe in October 2015 when it partnered with quality retailer Tripidi in Frankfurt Airport, Germany, and has since branched out with a range of partnerships, including with German payment provider Concardis in June 2016, and French payment processing group Ingenico in August 2016. In addition to a variety of offline scenarios, users can now pay with Alipay in locations including Harrods, Selfridges, Printemps and Munich Airport, one of ten airports worldwide to have joined Alipay’s “Future Airport” program, and can process tax refunds via the app in 23 European countries.

In addition to POS payments, Alipay is also exploring ways to give overseas merchants greater exposure to Chinese consumers. Alipay’s “Discovery” platform helps European retailers target Chinese users who travel to Europe, and enables Alipay users to connect with European merchants to receive merchant information and promotional offers. Users can search information on over 570,000 European merchants in 381 cities in 20 countries on the platform.

Launched in 2004, Alipay currently has over 450 million active users. Users can hail a taxi, book a hotel, buy movie tickets, pay utility bills, make appointments with doctors, or purchase wealth management products directly from within the app. In addition to online payments, Alipay is expanding to in-store offline payments both inside and outside of China. Over 2 million brick-and-mortar merchants now accept Alipay across China. As of June 2016, excluding Chinese Mainland, Alipay was supported in 70 countries and regions, with in-store payments covering more than 80,000 retail stores, and tax reimbursement via Alipay is supported in 24 countries. Alipay works with over 200 overseas financial institutions and payment solution providers to enable cross-border payments for Chinese travelling overseas and overseas customers who purchase products from Chinese e-commerce sites. Alipay currently supports 18 currencies.

Ant Financial Services Group is focused on serving small and micro enterprises, as well as consumers. Ant Financial is dedicated to building an open ecosystem of Internet thinking and technologies while working with other financial institutions to support the future financial needs of society. Businesses operated by Ant Financial Services Group include Alipay, Ant Fortune, Zhima Credit and MYbank.