Tech giants are currently trying their hardest to continue the Chinese expedition and ‘please the dragon’ campaign. Samsung is the latest contender to join Apple in tackling the growing Chinese market, by announcing a partnership with the popular Chinese digital wallet platform, AliPay.
The Korean giant has today announced a partnership with Ant Financial, the parent company behind the online payment platform, AliPay to expand Samsung Pay services in China. Alipay currently boasts to have over 450 million registered users and 200 financial institution partners, that Samsung wants to tackle and bank upon.
This partnership will give Samsung an upper hand against Apple Pay(launched in February in China) as it is still facing problems in tackling China, shown by the decline of iPhone sales this quarter. The company says that it is committed to bring cutting-edge fintech to China in partnership with AliPay, standing by its promise to become the true digital wallet of the modern era.
AliPay is the largest third-party online payment platform in China and has seen tremendous growth since its launch in 2004. Alipay in addition to its online platform is now also going offline, and has about 600,000 brick & mortar stores and over one million taxi’s now accepting payment using Alipay. This provides an overhead to Samsung in this partnership, while AliPay enjoys the technology Samsung has to offer.
Injong Rhee, EVP and Head of R&D, Software and Services of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics says that,
We are excited to be working with Alipay to expand Samsung Pay services in China. The reception of Samsung Pay since its launch has been extremely positive and the service has already seen tremendous success in terms of availability and adoption by consumers. We ultimately want to make Samsung Pay available to as many consumers as possible around the globe, so that everyone can have the opportunity to enjoy the simplicity, safety and convenience of this mobile payment solution.
Chinese consumers can easily register your AliPay account on Samsung Pay and start making payments using their mobile phones right now, if they have a Galaxy smartphone in-hand. You can simply swipe up from the Lock Screen or Home Screen, select your AliPay QR code and hold the smartphone up at the merchant’s scanner in order to complete the payment.
Apple has also been trying to strike a similar deal with Ant Financial to penetrate the Chinese market since last year, but there has been no confirmation of the same. But, if the deal goes through it will help Apple stabilize its sales and increase its plummeting market share in China.
Ant Financial, came into being as a Alibaba spin-off and has since received a humongous $4.5 Billion in funding. Alibaba is also creating waves in the Indian market as it pumps money into India’s biggest digital wallet platform, PayTM making it go global with the Uber partnership.
