Alipay reached agreement with SIX to expand in Europe

SIX Payment Services and Alipay, the third-party payment and lifestyle platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, announced their close cooperation for the acceptance of POS and E- Commerce payments across Europe. Under the terms of the agreement, Alipay’s payment service will be integrated into the payment application of SIX in order to enable merchant clients of SIX to accept Alipay payments from Alipay users.

SIX currently has a customer base of 220,000 merchants locations, principally in Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, Germany.

Alipay, controlled by billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, has also struck deals with BNP Paribas, Barclays and UniCredit to add support for the payment service across their respective merchant bases, opening up access to an additional 820,000 merchants in France, the UK and Italy.

Douglas Feagin, SVPt of Ant Financial and president of Alipay International, says: “We already have partnerships with some of Europe’s most well-known retailers, which have proven extremely popular with traveling Chinese consumers. By working with financial institutions who already have a massive footprint in Europe, we are taking our presence in the continent to the next level.” 

Alipay is the leading payment service provider in China, with more than 450 million users, a market share of 80% in mobile payments. The mobile payment unit of Alibaba's Ant Financial has set its sights on expanding its business to over 2bn users worldwide over the next decade, targetting one million merchant locations in overseas markets.

Alipay first expanded into Europe in October 2015 in Germany. The payments service is now available to use in locations such as famous London department store Harrods and Munich airport. Users can also process tax refunds via the app in 23 European countries.

Rita Liu, Head of Alipay Europe, says: “The cooperation with SIX gives Alipay access to a broad merchant base across Europe: potentially Alipay users will be able to pay at 110.000 additional merchants in Switzerland and beyond. As our preferred partner, SIX takes us one step further in becoming a truly globally accepted payment system.”