Ant Group has welcomed seven new e-wallets and five payment apps from Asia to the ‘Alipay+-in-China’ programme. Users of e-wallets mPay (Macao SAR, China), Hipay (Mongolia), Changi Pay (Singapore), OCBC (Singapore), Naver Pay (South Korea), Toss Pay (South Korea), and TrueMoney (Thailand) can now use their familiar home e-wallets on their own mobile devices for seamless mobile payments within mainland China, benefiting from Alipay's extensive merchant network.

With these recent additions, the total number of accepted overseas e-wallets in mainland China now stands at 10. AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China), Touch 'n Go e-wallet (Malaysia), and Kakao Pay (South Korea) pioneered this programme in late 2022. In total, these payment options serve a population exceeding 175 million across Southeast and East Asia.

Users of these e-wallets may use their own payment app wherever Alipay works, to enjoy secure, smooth, and cashless payments, and transparent and competitive exchange rates. They can also enjoy additional promotional deals via Alipay+ Rewards, a digital cross-border marketing hub integrated into select wallet apps. The wallets’ teams are also providing familiar customer support to their roaming users, backed by Alipay+’s smart payment tech capabilities.

With the A+China programme, Alipay+ also officially welcomes five new mobile payment partners, including Hipay, Changi Pay, OCBC, Naver Pay, and Toss Pay to its global merchant network. The coverage of Alipay+ Alipay+, developed by Ant Group, enables payment partners to connect global and local merchants to cross-border digital consumers. It operates in 56 international markets with 5 million merchants and collaborates with over 20 mobile payment partners across Asia, serving 1.4 billion consumer accounts.

The A+China programme extends its service to leverage China's vast merchant network, encompassing tens of millions of points-of-sale (POS). This expansion is made possible through the guidance of the People's Bank of China and support from NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, e-wallet partners, international card organisations, and other financial institutions in China. Travelers can also link their international bank cards to an updated international version of Alipay to access mobile payment and digital services in China.

Ant Group is conducting extensive merchant education and marketing campaigns in top tourist cities across mainland China to welcome Asian athletes, fans, and travellers. Officials from Ant Group said expanding partners and merchant network, and enhancing digital operational capabilities of SMEs are key to Alipay+’s future strategy. A growing variety of mobile payment providers are joining this ecosystem of cross- border digital commerce, from mobile wallets, to banking apps, independent merchant apps and super-apps.

They will invest faster and deeper in payment and digital marketing technologies to help their partners and merchants achieve robust, omni-channel growth. The digital payments ecosystem in China The total number of payments made in China through the pilot A+China wallets – Kakao Pay, Touch ’n Go eWallet and AlipayHK – grew 47 times in six months between March and August 2023, according to the press release. Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are the favourite cities for travellers from South Korea, Malaysia, and Hong Kong SAR.

Food and beverage, retail and transportation are the three most common scenarios for these transactions. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, by 2030 the number of cashless transactions will be about double to triple. While China leads the region in digital wallet usage, the rest of Asia, especially Southeast Asia, has become the world's fastest growing mobile payment market.

FIS research shows that between 2018 and 2023 digital wallets in the region (excluding China) more than doubled their share of ecommerce transaction value and share of payment transaction value at point-of-sales grow six folds. .