The complete guide to Alipay+: a key step to expanding business
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For merchants looking to attract international customers, especially Chinese consumers, integrating with Alipay+ has become an important strategy for expanding their global business.
This article provides detailed information about Alipay+ to help merchants understand its features, advantages, business coverage, the benefits of integrating Alipay+, and how Silkpay can help you easily access this leading payment solution.
What is Alipay+?
Alipay+ was officially launched by Ant International in 2022 as an upgraded global cross-border payment platform built on the technology and ecosystem of Alipay. It is designed to help merchants connect to multiple leading e-wallets across Asia and worldwide.This not only enables merchants to expand into international markets but also offers global consumers a more convenient and more diverse payment experience.
With the continuous growth of the number of Asian outbound tourists, Alipay+ has actively helped merchants expand their reach to a broader range of customers from Asian markets. Currently, Alipay+ is available in over 50 countries and regions around the world, supporting transactions in over 20 currencies.
Simply put, Alipay+ works like a super connector: one integration that connects merchants’ payment systems to 20+ major Asian e-wallets with over 1.6 billion users.
Read more on the difference between Alipay and Alipay+.
Silkpay provides multiple Alipay+ integration types
Online and offline payment integration: Silkpay supports both offline and online website/APP payment with one system.Whether in physical stores or on online platforms, Silkpay enables merchants to offer users the Alipay+ payment option.
International transaction processing: Through Silkpay, Alipay+ automatically handles currency exchange, compliance review and international settlement involved in cross-border transactions. For example, Chinese tourists pay in RMB, and you can directly receive your local currency (such as EUR), which saves you the trouble of exchanging currency and high handling fees, and Silkpay will handle the complex regulations of cross-border payment.
Multiple payment methods: By connecting to Alipay+, merchants can not only accept payments from Alipay, but also from other Asian e-wallets and payment methods that it cooperates with (such as Kakao Pay in South Korea, GCash in the Philippines, etc.).
Not only can merchants attract Chinese tourists, but they can also reach tourists from other Asian countries and seize the broader Asian consumer market. One integration unlocks multiple payment methods from key source markets.
In short, for merchants, Alipay+ is a "money-collecting tool" that allows you to easily and safely receive money from foreign customers. It is also a complete solution for you to attract and serve over a billion Chinese and Asian consumers.
Alipay+ business scope
The local e-wallets covered by Alipay+ include but are not limited to:
Mainland China: Alipay
Hong Kong, China: AlipayHK
Philippines: GCash, Maya
Malaysia: Touch 'n Go eWallet, Boost
South Korea: Kakao Pay, Toss
Thailand: TrueMoney
Singapore: GrabPay
Indonesia: DANA, DOKU
Vietnam: Zalopay
Europe: Bluecode
Italy: Tinaba
Alipay+’s market coverage
China
In China, Alipay occupies the dominant position in the mobile payment market, more than 800 million people use it every day, which covers all aspects of life from buying vegetables, taking taxis to paying utility bills.
Southeast Asian
Alipay+ has been gaining increasing acceptance in Southeast Asia and supporting multiple local e-wallets. According to research by Ant International and IDC, travel spending in Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea is expected to grow by 330% by 2027, providing a significant market opportunity for Alipay+. In addition, the mobile payment penetration rate in Southeast Asia is higher than the global average, at around 60%, which further drives the adoption of Alipay+.
Europe
In the European markets, Alipay+ primarily targets Asian tourists and local Asian communities, and is widely used in popular tourist attractions, luxury stores, and other retail scenarios.
For European merchants, Asian consumers represent a major driving force in global travel retail. Integrating Alipay+ not only significantly improves their shopping experience but also helps businesses handle large transactions more easily.
At the same time, for the vast Asian community living abroad, retail stores, restaurants, supermarkets and other stores that support Alipay+ will become highly attractive and convenient options in their daily lives.
Alipay+’s business cover
E-commerce platform
Alipay+ is a convenient payment solution for online merchants. By integrating Alipay+, your website or app can redirect to Alipay for quick payment, which lowers the payment barrier for Chinese consumers and further boosts order conversion rates.
Physical stores
Retail, catering and other offline merchants can place the Alipay+ QR code at the cashier to receive Chinese customers, especially suitable for stores in tourist cities.
Small and medium-sized enterprises
Alipay+ provides a low-cost and high-efficiency access solution, so that small businesses and start-ups can accept international payments and reach global customers like multinational companies.
International business
For merchants specializing in cross-border trade, access to Alipay+ is equivalent to providing your foreign buyers with the most convenient and trusted payment method.
Tourism business
Serve Asian consumers traveling abroad. After connecting to Alipay+, your store will appear in the platform's merchant list, actively attracting tourists who are nearby and have consumption needs.
Comparable solutions to Alipay+
In addition to Alipay+, consider connecting to these mainstream Asian payment methods to cover a wider customer base:
WeChat Pay
As Alipay's main competitor, WeChat Pay also has a huge user base and is suitable for targeting Chinese consumers at the same time.
UnionPay
UnionPay provides another way to accept payments from Asian consumers, especially in the field of credit card payments, and is trusted by middle-aged and elderly people who are used to swiping cards or consumers who make large transactions.
Silkpay: Your fast track to Alipay+
For overseas merchants, connecting to the Alipay+ often involves complex steps which can make this payment method impossible to integrate.
However, with Silkpay, an Alipay+ solution expert, the onboarding process can be greatly simplified. Silkpay helps businesses easily achieve:
Quickly complete technical setup
What we do: Whether it’s POS integration, API integration, or a plugin, we provide both software and hardware, along with clear and easy-to-understand documentation. You don’t need to dive into Alipay’s complex underlying technology. Our technical team will assist you with the integration and directly guide you in using Alipay for payments. For our POS terminal, we provide our merchants with a ready-to-use POS terminal, no setup required from the merchants side.
Benefits for you: Save significant development time and labor costs, without spending months on Alipay integration and staff training.
Access more payment methods:
What we do: Silkpay enables merchants to access more than 30 payment methods at once, including Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, Alipay+, WeChat Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more.
Benefits for you: Expand your payment options, reach more customers globally, and ease the management of multiple payment channels in a single integration.
Handle compliance and paperwork
What we do: As a partner, we are familiar with all processes and requirements. We will clearly inform you of the materials you need to prepare and provide full support throughout the entire Alipay+ integration process.
Benefits to you: Avoid being rejected due to incomplete or non-compliant documents, greatly improve the success rate of access, and save time and effort.
Provide multilingual customer service support
What we do: We provide multilingual support in Chinese, English, French, and Italian to help our merchants address any issues encountered. Whether it’s the initial integration process and staff training or technical issues arising during use, our technical team offers full professional support throughout.
Benefits to you: No need to worry about language barriers and time differences, you can get timely help at any time.
Provide data analysis and business insights
What we do: Our management backend not only provides clear transaction records, but also helps you manage orders across multiple stores, process refunds, and send payment links.
Benefits for you: Monitor store performance, optimize business strategies, and make bill reconciliation easier for your stores.
Conclusion
By integrating Alipay+, merchants can not only easily serve Chinese and Asian consumers, but also expand into international markets and grow their global business.
Silkpay is a trusted partner for many merchants and helps European businesses accept global payments easily.
With Silkpay, your best choice for integrating Alipay+, you don’t have to deal with any complex integration processes. We provide comprehensive technical support, multilingual services, and data analytics to help you complete integration quickly, optimize operations, and focus on business growth.
About the author: Silkpay
Based in Paris, Silkpay provides omnichannel and secure payment solutions to help physical stores and e-commerce in Europe and the Americas accept more than 30 of the world's most popular payment methods: Visa, Mastercard, CB, UnionPay, Alipay+, WeChat Pay as well as Asia-Pacific’s major e-wallets.
Silkpay is a winner of the LVMH Innovation Award. The company was also selected as a finalist for the "Money 20/20" Best Startup and in the "MPE Berlin” Startup Awards. Silkpay also won the "Best Fintech" awards from Capgemini and BPCE.
Silkpay helps merchants deliver the smoothest payment experience to their customers. We are a talented and international team driven by a single goal: to improve the customer experience and make payments simple and secure.