Ant Group’s Alipay+ Expands Its Global Reach

After dominating the Asian payments market, Chinese fintech Ant Group is now expanding its Alipay+ app presence into Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Ant, a division of Alibaba Group, has been investing in country-specific e-wallets across Asia. Alipay+ has already partnered with digital payment services like Singapore’s SGQR and South Korea’s ZeroPay. Now, it aims to forge connections with similar mobile payment apps worldwide, having initiated partnerships with European businesses such as Italy’s Tinaba and Nexi, and the Middle East’s Dubai Duty Free.

Alipay+ allows residents of various Asian countries to use their home nation’s apps to make payments within China. Currently, the company links 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions to 1.5 billion consumer accounts across more than 25 e-wallets and bank apps. The basic process involves consumers scanning QR codes to access its local partners.

“What we found is that people want to use their home e-wallets when they travel abroad,” Douglas Feagin, Ant International’s President, told CNBC. “So they don’t want to have to load their card into another app that they don’t know as well.”

A Crowded Marketplace

Ant will enter an already-crowded marketplace in these new regions. In Germany alone, PayPal, Klarna, Payback Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Giropay, and Google Pay have firmly established themselves as digital payment providers. 

However, it’s worth noting that the European payments landscape isn’t as advanced as China’s, where digital payments dominate. According to Statista, the digital payments market is expected to reach $2.19 billion in 2024, increasing to $3.07 billion by 2028.

At the same time as the expansion announcement, Alipay+ also announced a partnership with Kaspi.kz, a Kazakhstani conglomerate that operates the Kaspi.kz Super App for consumers and the Kaspi Pay Super App for merchants. This collaboration will enable customers to access these services throughout China.

In addition, Alipay recently entered into a partnership with Mastercard to enhance its international payment offerings by streamlining real-time international fund transfers to China. This integration allows Mastercard’s bank, fintech, and corporate customers worldwide to offer their consumers real-time access to the e-wallet.