French payment services company Worldline has announced that it is integrating Alipay+ into the company’s payment offering.

By doing so, Worldline will equip European in-store and e-commerce merchants with the tools to deal with a wide range of e-wallets and bank apps such as Malaysia’s Touch’ n Go eWallet, Thailand’s TrueMoney, GCash in the Philippines, South Korea’s KakaoPay service, as well as Alipay and AlipayHK in China. This works both ways, as online shoppers and travellers from Asia will experience a familiar payment flow.

Merchants from different sectors in Europe such as retail, F&B and hospitality owning Worldline terminals will only need to upgrade their POS and e-Commerce solutions with no additional investment to enable the fully automated Alipay+ acceptance which works fully automatically.

Vincent Roland, MD of Merchant Services at Worldline, commented: “At Worldline, our key ambition is to create maximum simplicity for both merchants and their customers in order to provide a smooth payment journey. By supporting the acceptance of Alipay+, we will help our customers in Europe to offer Asian shoppers and tourists with a secure, trusted and easy payment experience.”

AliPay+ is a cross-border digital payments suite operated by Hangzhou-based Ant Group. The Chinese fintech giant has been involved in a partnership with Worldline since 2016, providing tourists from China with integrated European payment solutions.

Angel Zhao, President of Ant Group’s International Business Group said: “Worldline and Ant Group are longstanding and trusted partners. Therefore, we know Worldline’s expertise will make a fundamental contribution to our mission of enabling European companies to reach, target and sell to global consumers, enabling payments, promotions and digital services with a simple POS & E-Commerce integration.

“Alipay+ is a suite of innovative solutions already connected with more than one billion customers in Asia. It lets users interact with merchants, natively from their favourite digital payment methods, wallets or mobile banking, with a secure and seamless experience. Worldline is the perfect partner to leverage Alipay+ features to help European merchants accelerate their globalization and digitization journey,” Zhao concluded.