Chinese fintech Ant Group is doubling its global expansion with Alipay+

The Chinese fintech group Ant Group desires to strengthen its global presence through its digital offering Alipay+ and connect mobile payment apps all over the world.

“We found that people want to use their domestic e-wallets when traveling abroad. “So they don’t want to have to load their card into another app that they don’t know very well,” said Douglas Feagin, senior vp of Ant Group, a subsidiary of the Chinese tech giant Ali Babasaid CNBC.

The group's global arm, Ant International, launched Alipay+ in 2020, allowing foreigners to make use of apps from their home countries to make payments in China by scanning QR codes from Alipay – Ant's largely domestic-focused platform Group – and in other countries via local partners.

“We see huge potential for expansion and the relatively broad coverage we have in Asia – we.” [would] “We like to breed in places like the Middle East, Latin America and Europe,” Feagin said. “People from all of these regions are going to other regions, so there’s a big opportunity for expansion.”

Ant has invested in country-specific e-wallets across Asia, but CEOs wish to take their products abroad, said Feagin, also president of Ant International.

The company has some cross-border tourism business with customers traveling outside of China, Feagin said, but that’s “mainly focused on where the Chinese tourists are traveling.” Ant had entered Europe and the US via Alipay, where Chinese tourism was booming before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ant is attempting to profit from its early forays into these markets with its Alipay+ offering.

“We had the advantage that Alipay was already accepted by many merchants around the world, so one of our first steps was [to] Convert these merchants to Alipay+ merchants. So instead of just accepting one wallet, they can accept many wallets,” Feagin said.

Alipay+ now connects 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions with 1.5 billion consumer accounts across greater than 25 e-wallets and banking apps ant.

As a part of its business expansion abroad, Ant acquired shares in several firms including The payment company 2C2P from Singapore in 2022 and South Korea's Kakao Pay in 2017.

Ant has also collaborated with national digital payment services comparable to: Singapore's SGQRMalaysia DuitNow QR And South Korea's ZeroPay last 12 months.

“Ant Group’s early vision for global expansion focused on Southeast Asia. The company strategically participated in e-wallets in all major Southeast Asian economies,” said Zennon Kapron, founder and director of consulting firm Kapronasia, in a press release January report.

Ant can also be expanding into emerging markets comparable to Sri Lanka in addition to Cambodia. The company has also expanded into Europe and the Middle East and works with European e-wallets fertilizer in July last 12 months and I connected in February as well Dubai duty free within the Middle East earlier this 12 months.

There are also growth opportunities in the corporate's established markets comparable to Singapore and South Korea. For example, many individuals in China use mobile payments, but still far fewer in comparison with people in other countries, Feagin said.

“There is still a lot of room for growth. I think a lot of people only think about using traditional payment methods when they go abroad.”

“If you think about the big markets like Thailand and Japan that attract a lot of tourists, the growth opportunities for mobile app payments are huge.”

“Following the restructuring ordered by Chinese regulators, which occurred concurrently with various geopolitical tensions affecting its ability to expand in certain markets, Ant changed its global expansion strategy. The result was Alipay+, which aims to address interoperability issues in e-wallets,” Kapron said.

The company initially targeted countries with large populations to quickly expand its user base, Feagin said. Major tourism destinations comparable to Japan, Thailand and Singapore were also examined.

“These are big markets for people who want to come to us, and that’s why we’ve been very focused on expanding their dealer coverage there,” Feagin said.

And now the corporate is doubling down on its global expansion, targeting markets in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.