Image of a person making a mobile payment.
Ant International
Chinese fintech giant Ant Group is looking to increase its global presence through its Alipay+ digital service as it seeks to connect mobile payment apps around the world.
Douglas Feagin, senior deputy: “What we found is that people wanted to use e-wallets at home when traveling abroad. So they don’t want to have to load their card into another app that they don’t know about.” Chairman of Ant Group, a subsidiary of the Chinese technology giant Alibaba.comtold CNBC.
The group’s global arm, Ant International, introduced Alipay+ in 2020, allowing foreigners to use apps from their home country to make payments in China by scanning the QR code of Alipay – the platform mainly focused domestically for Ant Group – and in other countries through local partners.
“We see great opportunity for expansion and relatively broad coverage in Asia – we [would] want to replicate in places like the Middle East, Latam and Europe,” Feagin said. “People from all these regions are going to other regions, so this is a big opportunity to expand.”
Feagin, who is also president of Ant International, said Ant has invested in country-specific digital wallets across Asia, but the CEOs want to take their products abroad.
The company does have some cross-border travel business from customers traveling outside of China, but that activity is “primarily focused on places where Chinese tourists go,” Feagin said. Ant entered Europe And Americawhere Chinese tourism was booming before the Covid-19 pandemic, through Alipay.
Ant with its Alipay+ service is looking to make the most of its early entry into those markets.
“We have the benefit that Alipay is already accepted at many merchants around the world so one of our first steps is [to] convert those merchants into Alipay+ merchants. So instead of just accepting one wallet, they can accept multiple wallets,” Feagin said.
Alipay+ currently connects 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions with 1.5 billion consumer accounts across more than 25 e-wallets and banking applications, according to Ant.
Market growth
As part of its plans to expand its business abroad, Ant has bought shares in several companies such as Singapore payment company 2C2P in 2022 and Kakao Pay of Korea in 2017.
Ant also partners with national digital payment services such as SGQR of SingaporeMalaysia DuitNow QR And ZeroPay of Korea last year.
“Ant Group’s original vision for global expansion focused on Southeast Asia,” said Zennon Kapron, founder and director of consulting firm Kapronasia. The company holds strategic stakes in the e-wallet sector in every major economy in Southeast Asia.” 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 in February as well Dubai is tax 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, Feagin said, where a lot of people use mobile payments in China, for example, but are still far fewer than others. people in other countries.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for growth. I think a lot of people only think about using traditional payment methods when they go abroad.”
“When you think about the big markets that see a lot of tourists, like Thailand and Japan, the opportunity to grow payments from mobile apps is huge.”
From problem to solution
“Following a restructuring mandated by Chinese regulators, which coincided with various geopolitical tensions affecting its ability to expand in certain markets, Ant revised its global expansion strategy. As a result, Alipay+ aims to solve interoperability problems for e-wallets.”
Feagin said the company first targeted countries with large populations to quickly expand its user base. It also looks at key travel destinations such as Japan, Thailand and Singapore.
“These are big markets for people who want to come and visit and so we focus a lot on building their commercial coverage there,” Feagin said.
And now it is doubling down on its global expansion, targeting European, Latin American and Middle Eastern markets.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
