Tourism is making a significant contribution to Ant Group’s transaction volume and revenue, the Chinese fintech group has detailed.
The fintech arm of the Alibaba Group witnessed a sixfold increase in the number of transaction volumes from inbound tourists between March-August 2024, year-over-year.
Cyril Han Xinyi, President and CFO of Ant Group, shared these figures at the 2024 INCLUSION·Conference last week. The firm’s popularity among tourists comes about due to its extensive work with overseas card networks alongside the dominance its payments provider brand, Alipay, has in mainland China.
In March, Ant Group launched the Consumer Friendly Zones programme. The ultimate goal of this was to improve ease of use and accessibility of digital payments for international travellers. This has been expanded to cover 70 cities.
Cyril Han Xinyi, President and CFO, Ant Group, said: “We’ve been encouraged by the substantial growth in mobile payment adoption among international visitors and the resulting boost in transactions for our merchant partners, especially since the launch of the International Consumer Friendly Zones programme.
“Ant Group is committed to further elevating inbound travel experience through technological innovation and partnerships.”
Ant Group has been working with international card networks and overseas wallets to support inbound mobile payments. Its work in this area has been supported by the People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank.
Overseas users bind bank cards issued by Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Discovery, Diners Club International and UnionPay International to the AliPay app. This is set to expand with the addition of American Express.
Alipay+, meanwhile, has built up connections with a range of international e-wallets. This includes its Hong Kong variant, AlipayHK, alongside AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China), Kaspi.kz (Kazakhstan), MPay (Macao SAR, China), Touch ‘n Go eWallet (Malaysia), Hipay (Mongolia), NayaPay (Pakistan), Changi Pay and OCBC Digital (Singapore), Kakao Pay (South Korea), Naver Pay (South Korea), Toss Pay (South Korea), TrueMoney (Thailand), and GCash (Philippines).
Tourism is a huge industry in China, with 145-million inbound tourists generating total revenue of nearly US$36bn in 2019 alone according to Statista. Serving this vast sector is unsurprisingly a valuable investment for Ant Group.
The news also showcases the extent of Ant Group’s global corporations, much of which has been facilitated via its Ant International division. The firm is interested in various markets, with Ant International CEO, Peng Yang, explaining its role in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 project.
On the tourism figures, Yang remarked: “Alipay+ has established a global network of 90 million merchant partners across 57 markets to make global travel seamless; while WorldFirst and Antom offer secure and fast digital payment solutions tailored to the needs of SMEs, global merchants and platforms. We look forward to expanding our partnership for digitalisation and inclusion in all regions.”
