Alipay advances on Europe with bank and processor deals

Under the terms of the agreement with SIX, Alipay’s payment service will be integrated into the Swiss firm's payment application in order to enable merchant clients to accept QR-code-based Alipay payments. SIX currently has a customer base of 220,000 merchants locations, principally in Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, Germany.

Alipay has also struck deals with BNP Paribas, Barclays and UniCredit to add support for the payment service across their respective merchant bases, opening up access to an additional 820,000 merchants in France, the UK and Italy.

Douglas Feagin, SVPt of Ant Financial and president of Alipay International, says: “We already have partnerships with some of Europe’s most well-known retailers, which have proven extremely popular with traveling Chinese consumers. By working with financial institutions who already have a massive footprint in Europe, we are taking our presence in the continent to the next level.”

In the terminal vendor market, SIX Payment Services follows in the footsteps of Ingenico, Wirecard, Zapper and Verifone in integrating Alipay to tap into the spending potential of the millions of Chinese tourists who flock to Europe every year.

Alipay is the leading payment service provider in China, with more than 450 million users, a market share of 80% in mobile payments. The mobile payment unit of Alibaba's Ant Financial has set its sights on expanding its business to over 2bn users worldwide over the next decade, targetting one million merchant locations in overseas markets.

Rita Liu, head of Alipay Europe, says: “The cooperation with SIX gives Alipay access to a broad merchant base across Europe: potentially Alipay users will be able to pay at 110.000 additional merchants in Switzerland and beyond. As our preferred partner, SIX takes us one step further in becoming a truly globally accepted payment system.”