While China's leading mobile-payment platforms, Alipay and WeChat Pay, are accelerating its expansion in global market in 2017, shrewd European businesses are also trying to adapt themselves as soon as possible to the new consuming habits of Chinese consumers in hopes of grabbing the huge potential brought by China.
A win-win business model is being fast established as the two sides are getting closer via a new way of payment.
MOBILE-PAYMENT TAKING ROOT IN EUROPE
The year of 2017 has witnessed the fast expansion of China's mobile-payment in Europe, as two China's major online payment platforms, Alipay and WeChat Pay, have appeared in many busy commercial zones in Europe, from duty-free shops in airports to vintage shops in high streets of major European cities, from the most popular outlets in Britain to chain stores in Germany.
They are taking root in Europe with not only their payment services but also their management and their long-range plan.
Alipay, for instance, has been used in the large part of the Europe. Ant Financial, the operator of Alipay, has set up branch offices in Britain, Luxembourg and other European countries.
Peng Yijie, vice president of the group, told Xinhua that Alipay has reached cooperation with BNP Paribas, Barclays Bank, Yusin Bank, SIX, Wirecard, Concardis, Ingenico and others to jointly work to promote mobile commerce in Europe.
Among them, BNP Paribas, Barclays UK, Yusin Bank, SIX currently have access to some 930,000 merchants in Europe.
What matters is not only the number, but also the convenience they could offer in consumption.
Through the cooperation with local banks, Alipay users are able to do easy payment when they consume in these merchant stores. Via POS machines, consumption can be completed by just scanning the barcode, the same way as what their peers in China are doing now.
It's still not all the plan of Alipay, which has established cooperation with German payment service provider Concardis.
Although the cooperation with Concardis has made the Chinese online payment platform available in over 200,000 German merchants, including major chain stores such as Metro, Aldi and Douglas, its operator Ant Financial has a more ambitious plan of extending its services to 2 billion users worldwide in 10 years.
According to the plan, in the future, 60 percent of Alipay's users will come from outside Germany. In addition to the online payment market, the Chinese company aims to help its business partners to promote the development of inclusive finance in the world.
