Commonwealth Bank of Australia has signed a reciprocal deal with Ant Financial to open access to Alibaba e-commerce Websites for Australian consumers and businesses and provide Alipay payments for Chinese tourists through its Albert POS devices.
Under the terms of the MOU, the two companies will work together to make it easier for Australian consumers to pay for purchases made through Alibaba Group’s e-commerce websites, supported by Ant Financial’s payment infrastructure, including AliExpress, a platform for Chinese merchants to sell to global consumers.
Commonwealth Bank will also offer Alipay as an embedded payment option within its family of smart tablet POS devices.
Alipay has been on a global tear of late, hitching its wagon to terminal device manufacturers across Europe and the US as it looks to provide its 450 million Chinese subscribers with a familiar payments experience when travelling and spending abroad.
Approximately 19,000 Chinese tourists visit Australia every week and spend almost $8,000 per person, says Douglas Feagin, SVP of Ant Financial Services Group and head of Alipay International.
“We want Alipay users to enjoy the kind of convenience they are used to at home," he adds. "We are working with regional and global partners like CBA to make this happen.”
Speaking at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas last week, Feagin laid out a bold vision for Alipay's expansion into overseas markets. “Our goal is to expand our business from 450m users in China to over 2bn worldwide over the next decade,” he said. “We want to achieve over one million merchants outside of China over the next several years.”