Photo of a person making a mobile payment.
Ant International
Chinese fintech major Ant is looking to boost its global presence through its digital offering, Alipay+, as it seeks to connect mobile payment apps around the world.
“What we’ve found is that people want to use their home wallets when they travel abroad. So they don’t want to load their card on another app that they don’t know about as well,” said Douglas Feagin, senior vice president of Ant Group, a subsidiary of the Chinese tech giant Alibabahe told CNBC.
The group’s global arm, Ant International, introduced Alipay+ in 2020, allowing foreigners to use apps from their home countries to make payments in China by scanning QR codes on Alipay – Ant Group’s heavily focused platform domestically – and in other countries through local partners.
“We see a huge opportunity for expansion and the relatively broad coverage we have in Asia – we [would] I like that they’re breeding in places like the Middle East, Latam and Europe,” Feagin said. “People from all those areas are going to other areas, so a big opportunity for expansion.”
Ant had invested in country-specific e-wallets across Asia, but CEOs wanted to take their products overseas, said Feagin, also president of Ant International.
The company had some cross-border tourism business from customers traveling outside of China, Feagin said, but that focused “mostly on where Chinese tourists go.” Ant had entered Europe and the US, where Chinese tourism was booming before the Covid-19 pandemic, through Alipay.
Ant with its Alipay+ offering is looking to make the most of early 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 to Alipay+ merchants. So instead of just accepting one wallet, they can accept multiple wallets,” Feagin said.
Alipay+ now connects 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions with 1.5 billion consumer accounts in more than 25 e-wallets and banking applications, according to Ant.
Growth markets
As part of its overseas expansion, Ant bought stakes in several companies such as Singapore 2C2P payment company in 2022 and South Korea’s Kakao Pay in 2017.
Ant has also partnered with national digital payment services such as SGQR of Singaporeof Malaysia DuitNow QR and South Korea’s ZeroPay last year.
“Ant Group’s early vision for global expansion was focused on Southeast Asia. The company took strategic stakes in e-wallets in every major Southeast Asian economy,” said Zennon Kapron, founder and director of consultancy Kapronasia. 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 last July and Nexi in February as well 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 compared to people in other countries, Feagin said.
“There’s huge room for growth. I think a lot of people just think about using traditional payment methods when they go abroad.”
“When you think about the big markets that receive a lot of tourists, like Thailand and Japan, the potential for mobile app payments to grow is huge.”
From problems to solutions
“Following the restructuring imposed by China’s regulatory authorities that coincided with various geopolitical tensions that affected its ability to expand into certain markets, Ant modified its global expansion strategy. The result was Alipay+ which aims to solve interoperability issues for e-wallets,” said Kapron.
The company initially targeted countries with large populations to quickly expand its user base, Feagin said. It also looked at major tourist destinations such as Japan, Thailand and Singapore.
“Those are big markets for people who want to come and visit and so we’ve focused a lot on growing their commercial coverage there,” Feagin said.
And now it is doubling down on its global expansion, with its sights set on markets in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.