Chinese payment and lifestyle platform Alipay has extended its “long-lasting” partnership with European payment and transactional service provider Worldline.
The firms state the partnership aims to broaden the acceptance of Asian payment wallets across Europe as the opportunities that stem from Chinese tourists continues to grow.
“During China’s ‘Golden Week’ national holiday in October, we found that European countries continue to be among the top travel destinations for Chinese tourists,” noted Karl Wehner, general manager Germany, Switzerland, Austria Alibaba Group – of which Alipay is a part of its ecosystem.
“For us, this is a clear sign of the enormous potential for European merchants to connect to even more Asian tourists, and we aim to serve them with our innovative technology through our extended cooperation with our trusted partner Worldline.”
Alipay currently serves over 1.2 billion users together with local e-wallet partners in the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
Through the agreement, Worldline will enable merchants’ point-of-sale (POS) systems to accept payments from Alipay’s proprietary wallet plus the firms e-wallet partners across Asia.
Providing multi-wallet acceptance is expected to provide merchants the opportunity to seize on the growing interest of Asian tourism and provide them with a payments journey they are comfortable will.
Roger Niederer, chief market officer merchant services at Worldline, added: “Our vision is to create maximum simplicity for both merchants and their customers in order to provide a smooth payment journey.
“By expanding our partnership with Alipay, we unlock the potential of a new generation of Asian tourists for our merchants across Europe and service the global economy in a most efficient way.”
Since the start of their cooperation in 2016, merchants from more than 20 European countries have utilised Wordline to connect to Alipay’s payment service.
