To ensure easy payment and transaction alternatives for Chinese millionaires and billionaires traveling abroad, Ant Financial Services is finally expanding its reach and stepping foot into the United States. The financial arm of Chinese behemoth Alibaba has partnered with payment processor First Data and hardware solution provider Verifone.
This expansion into foreign lands was announced today at the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas, reports TechCrunch.
With this partnership deal, Ant Financial is looking to expand the scope of its digital wallet service AliPay to North America and Europe. AliPay is the most widely used payment solution in China with over 450 million active users, which accounts for nearly 70 percent stake of the country’s third-party payment market. But, the company is now looking to extend this service to accommodate nearly 100 Chinese travelers.
Commenting on the extension of the wallet service beyond Chinese borders, Douglas Feagin, SVP of Ant Financial Services Group and Head of Alipay International says,
Scale, security and speed are important to us as we look to enable our customers to walk into a store while traveling abroad and pay for purchases with the Alipay App—just like they do here in China.
Through its partnership with Verifone, AliPay is explicitly looking to target approx. 29 million devices and terminals deployed worldwide. This will open up top-tier merchants across retail, luxury goods, health and department store to accept payment using AliPay’s payment gateway. This will help increase foot traffic, brand visibility for local stores and enhance the shopping experience for millions of Chinese tourists.
Commenting on the partnership, Albert Liu, EVP, Corporate Development at Verifone says,
By expanding Alipay acceptance across many borders for an easy, frictionless traveling and shopping experience, Verifone is creating a future that takes the convenient cashless payment experience to the next level for Chinese consumers wherever they are.
Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial is working aggressively to extend its services to offline payment terminals both inside and outside of China. The digital wallet app Alipay is currently accepted across over 80k retails outlets in 70 overseas countries and regions. Its biggest markets are Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, and Germany.
In addition to the extension of AliPay in U.S, TechCrunch reports that the company has also appointed Souheil Badran as General Manager of Alipay North America.
