Fintech
Chinese fintech Ant Group doubles global expansion with Alipay+
Photo of a person making a mobile payment.
Ant International
Chinese fintech giant Ant Group is looking to strengthen its global presence through its digital offering, Alipay+, seeking to connect mobile payment apps across the world.
“What we’ve found is that people want to use their home e-wallet when they travel abroad. So they don’t want to load their card into another app that they’re not familiar with,” Douglas Feagin, senior vice president of Ant Group, a subsidiary of the Chinese tech giant Alibabahe told CNBC.
The group’s global division, Ant International, introduced Alipay+ in 2020, allowing foreigners to use apps from their home countries to make payments in China by scanning QR codes from Alipay – Ant Group’s largely market-focused platform internally – and in other countries via local partners.
“We see a huge opportunity for expansion and the relatively broad coverage we have in Asia – we [would] I’d like to replicate that in places like the Middle East, Latin America and Europe,” Feagin said. “People from all these regions are going to other regions, so a great opportunity for expansion.”
Ant had invested in country-specific e-wallets across Asia, but CEOs wanted to take their products abroad, said Feagin, also president of Ant International.
The company had some cross-border tourism activity from customers traveling outside China, Feagin said, but it was “mostly focused on where Chinese tourists go.” Ant had entered Europe AND the United Stateswhere Chinese tourism was booming before the Covid-19 pandemic, through Alipay.
Ant, with its Alipay+ offering, seeks to make the most of its first forays into these markets.
“We had the advantage that Alipay was already accepted by many merchants around the world, so one of our first steps was [to] convert these merchants into Alipay+ merchants. So instead of just accepting one wallet, they can accept many wallets,” Feagin said.
According to Alipay+, it now connects 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions to 1.5 billion consumer accounts across more than 25 e-wallets and banking apps. Ant.
As part of its overseas business expansion, Ant has purchased stakes in several companies such as Singapore payments company 2C2P in 2022 and South Korea’s Kakao Pay in 2017.
Ant has also partnered with domestic digital payment services such as Singapore SGQRMalaysia DuitNowQR AND South Korea’s ZeroPay last year.
“Ant Group’s initial vision for global expansion was centered on Southeast Asia. The company has acquired strategic stakes in e-wallets in all major economies in Southeast Asia,” said Zennon Kapron, founder and director of Kapronasia consultancy company. January report.
Ant is also expanding into emerging markets such as Sri Lanka as well as Cambodia. The company has also expanded into Europe and the Middle East, partnering with European e-wallets Tinaba in July last year and Nexi even in February Dubai Duty Free in the Middle East earlier this year.
There are also growth opportunities in the company’s established markets such as Singapore and South Korea, for example many people use mobile payments in China, but still far fewer than people in other countries, Feagin said.
“There is huge room for growth. I think a lot of people only think about using traditional payment methods when they go abroad.”
“When you think about large markets that receive a lot of tourists, such as Thailand and Japan, the growth potential for mobile app payments is huge.”
“Following the restructuring imposed by Chinese regulators which occurred in conjunction with various geopolitical tensions that affected its ability to expand in certain markets, Ant changed its global expansion strategy. The result was Alipay+ which aims to resolve the interoperability issues for e-wallets,” Kapron said.
The company initially targeted countries with large populations to quickly expand its user base, Feagin said. It also looked at key tourist destinations such as Japan, Thailand and Singapore.
“These are great markets for people who want to come and visit them and so we’ve been very focused on building their business coverage there,” Feagin said.
And now it’s doubling down on its global expansion, with its sights set on European, Latin American and Middle Eastern markets.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.