Alipay - Ant Financial Group spreads its tentacles to Europe and continues to open up to the world

Ant Financial Services Group announced that it will work with a number of European financial institutions, including BNP Paribas, Barclays, Yusin Bank and SIX payment services companies, allowing Chinese tourists in Europe to use Alipay payment for more than 930,000 businesses.

Following domestic users’ mobile devices and Paypal payment at large-scale shopping malls in Japan and South Korea, the parent company of Ant Financial Services Group (in short Ant Group below), Alipay continues to expand its territory, through cooperation with a number of top European financial institutions to complete the goal into the European market.

Interfax news reporter was informed that the first batch of Ant Group announced partners including BNP Paribas, Barclays, Yuxin Bank and SIX payment services company. These four agencies currently have access to the total number of 93 million businesses in Europe. In the future, while Alipay users shops in Europe, they are expected to complete payment through the POS machine and payment code.

From Alipay announcement of the four specific cooperation, we can see the future Alipay establishing its path to European settlement.

Alipay implements various strategies toward its four major partners. For BNP Paribas, first Alipay access to the French business district through its banking network, and then gradually expand to other parts of Europe; for Barclays Bank, Alipay continues the digital payment through the bank's POS system; SIX payment services company will allow Alipay’s access to SIX payment applications, in order to facilitate Alipay users’ offline and online payment in SIX's network; finally, Yusin Bank will be introduce Alipay to Italy next year.

Becoming partners with payment service providers is Alipay’s fastest way to open up its global market. As in the United States, Alipay has Ingenico, First Data, Worldpay and Verifone and other payment platform to cooperate. In October 2015, Alipay tried to access European market for the first time. It chose a high-end goods shop in Frankfurt Airport Tripidi as the impact point, and then began to cooperate with more merchants and acquirers, including access to the German payment system provider Concardis in June 2016, and access to the French acquisition of Ingenico in August 2016.

"Users’ lifestyle are becoming more and more global, and it is vital for us to work with the world's top payment agencies to deliver reliable and convenient services wherever they are "Said Douglas Fagan, senior vice president and president of the International Business Unit at Ant Group. After working with local financial institutions that have been working in Europe for many years, Alipay overseas convenience services will be completely upgraded to a new level .

Interfax news reporter was informed that Alipay is currently handling about 250 million transactions per day, of which more than 2 million Chinese retail enterprises. As of the third quarter of 2016, Alipay has access to nearly 1 million businesses across 70 countries and regions outside the mainland China.

As of October this year, Ant Group has more than 450 million real-name users, of which 40 million overseas users and 150 million Paytm service users, means that the Ant Financial Services’ overseas users has been close to 200 million, accounting for just a bit less than a third of total financial service users worldwide.

Alipay is also reaching out its tentacles through strategic investment, offering partners technology and the payment model to overseas financial service agencies. Interface news found that the Ant Group have been collaborating with payment service agencies in India, South Korea, Thailand through above-mentioned methods.

Last year in September, India mobile information company One97 Communications (Paytm’s parent company) invested 680 million US dollars to become the largest shareholder. After one year collaboration between India's mobile payment platform Paytm and Ant Group, Paytm users increased from more than 20 millions to 1.5 billions, become the world's fourth largest e-wallet and the most popular company in India. The same year December, the Ant Group participated in the establishment of the Internet bank K-Bank as shareholders, and received the first issued banking license by South Korean government after 23 years.

In November 2016, the Ant Group again, with the Thai payment company Ascend Money, signed a strategic cooperation agreement that allows the two sides cooperate in product technology, business models, market operations, etc. At the same time, Ascend Money will also have access to Alipay "global payment" system. Ascend Money is expected to serve more than half of Thailand's Internet users in the next five years.

Source: http://www.jiemian.com/article/1002645.html