Ant Group redirects cross-border retail efforts inward with Alipay+ Asian Games tie-ups

Article by Tyler Van Dyke | Aug 14, 2023

The news: Ant Group will facilitate international mobile wallets acceptance at tens of millions of Chinese merchants during the 2022 Asian Games in September and October. (The games were delayed because of COVID-19.)

Alipay+, Ant Group’s cross-border paytech arm, will work with NetsUnion Clearing Corporation to accept the foreign wallets.
AlipayHK, KaKao Pay, and Touch’n Go will be among the first wallets to participate in the partnership.

How we got here: After a blistering tech crackdown in mainland China crushed its profits last year, Ant Group started ramping up Alipay+ with a streak of partnerships to draw in overseas revenues.

It helped tourists use their domestic wallets to make payments in South Korea, launched a digital storefront solution for brick-and-mortar businesses, rolled out end-of-year shopping campaigns with merchants across Asia-Pacific, and brought three of its mobile wallets to Thailand.
It also acquired two payment platforms in Singapore, 2C2P and Anext Bank, and posted 20 positions in Singapore—one of its largest hiring pushes in the market.

Now, with China’s tech crackdown largely in the rearview mirror, Alipay+ is redirecting its international expansions inward to capture the deluge of tourist commerce headed to China.

Roughly 80,000 foreign tourists visited Indonesia for the 2018 Asian Games, and they spent upward of $250 million during the two-week festival.
That was before the pandemic, but there are signs that China’s tourism industry is on the mend after the country lifted its severe COVID-19 restrictions. Domestic travel is already back at 90% of pre-pandemic levels, per Bloomberg, and inbound travel will likely surge in September/October thanks to promotional campaigns.

The bigger picture: As domestic payment networks across Asia-Pacific partner up to improve cross-border payments, international titans like Alipay are increasing their acceptance networks to stay competitive.

Singapore’s and the Philippines’ central banks enabled interoperable QR codes between the markets. Singapore also connected its real-time payments system with India’s Unified Payments Interface and Malaysia’s DuitNow.
And India partnered with Nepal on wallet interoperability.

These partnerships—most of which involve state-backed entities—could severely limit Alipay’s growth potential in regional markets. Alipay touts about 1.3 billion users worldwide, per Enterprise Apps Today, but 900 million of those users are in mainland China. With an expected 426.3 million mobile wallet users in Southeast Asia alone by 2026, Alipay can’t afford to miss out on the opportunity for such lucrative volume.