Ant Group's Alipay+ Enables More Asian E-Wallets For Cross-Border Mobile Payments In Mainland China

Alex Cheong Pui Yin

19th September 2023 - 3 min read

Ant Group has expanded its Alipay+ in China (A+ China) cross-border mobile payment programme to now include seven new e-wallet and payment apps from various countries across the Asian region. With this, travellers from these countries will be able to use their familiar home e-wallets to make payments in mainland China.

In a statement, Ant Group noted the new additions include:

mPay (Macao SAR, China)
Hipay (Mongolia)
Changi Pay (Singapore)
OCBC (Singapore)
Naver Pay (South Korea)
Toss Pay (South Korea)
TrueMoney (Thailand)

These seven e-wallets are added on top of the original three: AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China), Touch ‘n Go eWallet (Malaysia), and Kakao Pay (South Korea), which were piloted in the A+ China programme in late 2022. This essentially means that a total of ten e-wallets from abroad can now be used to make payments in mainland China.

Ant Group further explained that users of these e-wallets can use their own preferred payment apps wherever Alipay works (to clarify, Alipay is Ant Group’s e-wallet that is used within China, whereas Alipay+ is a payment system launched to connect merchants and consumers worldwide). Aside from being able to tap into secure and transparent cashless payments with competitive exchange rates, you’ll also get to enjoy dedicated customer support and exclusive promotional deals via Alipay+ Rewards, a digital cross-border marketing platform embedded within selected e-wallets.

In addition to enabling ten e-wallets for cross-border mobile payments within mainland China, Alipay+ also announced that it has onboarded five new mobile payment partners to its global merchant network via the A+ China programme, namely Hipay, Changi Pay, OCBC, Naver Pay, and Toss Pay. Following this development, these five e-wallets will be able to tap into the suite of cross-border mobile payment, marketing, and digitalisation solutions developed by Alipay+ to connect global and local merchants with digital cross-border consumers.

Ant Group further highlighted that these successes under the A+ China programme is made possible via the support of several parties, including the People’s Bank of China and NetsUnion. “It is incredibly inspiring to see such regional multi-party partnership help travellers enjoy greater choice and convenience, and small businesses thrive in cross-border commerce with unprecedented innovations,” said the chairman and chief executive officer of Ant Group, Eric Jing, who noted that these developments are also done in anticipation of the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games – which is bound to bring in many foreign travellers and athletes.

Meanwhile, senior vice president of Ant Group and head of Alipay+ Cross-Border Mobile Payment Services, Douglas Feagin stated that Alipay+’s future strategy will hinge upon the expansion of its partner and merchant network, as well as the enhancement of the digital operational capabilities of SMEs.

Other recent accomplishments by Ant Group include enabling support for travellers so that they can link international credit cards to the updated international version of Alipay to enjoy mobile payment and digital life services while in China. Travellers will be able to link Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club, and Discover cards to the platform.

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Alex Cheong Pui Yin

Previously covered recruitment-related stories and had a short stint as a copywriter for the property industry. She subsequently developed an interest in investment and robo-advisors.

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