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Ant Group’s Alipay+ to boost cashless travel in South Korea through alliance with Thai, Malaysian, Philippines payment providers
- Users of e-wallets operated by AlipayHK, GCash, Touch ‘n Go and TrueMoney can now settle transactions at more than 120,000 merchants in South Korea
- Backed by Alipay+, this initial roll-out in South Korea covers taxis, duty free shops, convenience stores, and food and beverage chains
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Chinese financial technology giant Ant Group is ramping up cashless travel in South Korea through its Alipay+ program, which supports a major collaboration between trusted mobile payment services providers across Asia.
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The collaboration will enable “Asian tourists to pay with convenience and simplicity in Korea using their preferred home e-wallets”, said Danny Chung, general manager of Ant Group Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Ant Group is an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the South China Morning Post.
Users of e-wallets operated by AlipayHK in Hong Kong, GCash in the Philippines, Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia and TrueMoney in Thailand can now settle transactions at more than 120,000 merchants in South Korea using their local mobile payment apps. The initial roll-out covers taxis, duty free shops, convenience stores as well as food and beverage chains.
This marks the first time that leading mobile payment providers from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong have extended the availability of their services in South Korea through Alipay+, which is a suite of global cross-border digital payments and marketing solutions. It is designed to enable businesses to process a wide range of mobile payment methods, while better serving regional and global consumers through simple technical adoption.
The collaboration backed by Alipay+ reflects efforts by Ant Group and other major Chinese internet companies to expand their businesses overseas, as domestic consumer spending weakens because of continued Covid-19 restrictions and the mainland’s faltering economy.
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