May 14, 2019
Alipay, a mobile wallet with about a billion users, said that its expansion into the Japanese market has seen a six-fold surge in retail adoption with more than 300,000 merchants there now accepting the mobile payment app. The growth from about 50,000 merchants during the year-ago quarter is due in part to an effort by the Japanese government to drive increased use of cashless payments, according to a company release.
Japan is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese tourists in the world, according to data from Alipay, and the company said it was working with its other digital wallet partners to drive more business to the country. Alipay works with digital wallet partners like Paytm in India, Thailand’s TrueMoney, GCash in the Philippines and kakaopay in South Korea.
"Alipay has been driving technology support to our nine e-wallet partners to enhance their cross-border payment capabilities, and hopefully to bring more Asian customers to Japan to continue to revitalize the local economy," Eric Jing, chairman and chief executive of Ant Financial, said in the release.
"We are dedicated to serving small and micro businesses throughout the world through our technology," he said. "Digital wallets like Alipay are not only convenient payment tools, but also smart marketing platforms to connect merchants and their potential customers before, during and after their potential visits to Japan."
Alipay officials said during China’s four-day Labor Day holiday period in May, Japan was ranked as the company’s fourth-largest destination in the world in terms of total spending and that average spending per person rose 25%.
China is the largest tourism market for Japan, with the country accounting for 37% of the 31 million tourists that visit the country in 2018, according to Alipay officials. Tourists from Asia accounted for 86 percent of all of the country’s international tourist traffic or about 26 million people.
.
Topics: In-App Payments, Mobile Apps, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Mobile Payments, Region: APAC
Sponsored Links: