Ant Financial Cooperates With Fuzhou To Develop Cashless Society

Ant Financial, the financial arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has clinched an agreement with Fuzhou to develop a cashless society.

Fuzhou will be the third Chinese to develop a cashless shopping environment together with Ant Financial following Hangzhou and Wuhan. This cashless development will be supported by an alliance which has been formed between Ant Financial and over 20 institutions including Fuzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce and State Grid Fujian Electric Power Company.

The campaign is expected to help over 90% of merchants and businesses in the city to operate cashless by the end of this year.

Currently, 95% of the taxi fleet, 85% of supermarkets and convenience stores and 80% of restaurants accept mobile payments and customers between 20 and 40 years old make up 80% of all these users.

In the partnership, Ant Financials, through its Alipay payment service, will aid the city in a few areas of development, namely transport, commercial and government services. These developments will set up the infrastructure which allows residents in Fuzhou to shop and travel simply with a smart phone.

According to RFi Group’s data on payments, Alipay is among the top 3 most important payment methods in China, with 74% of the banking population having used it in the last 12 months.

Stripe Enables Merchants To Accept Alipay and WeChat Pay

Silicon Valley payments company Stripe has partnered with digital payment providers Alipay and WeChat Pay to enable merchants using its platform globally to accept payments from hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers.

Starting Sunday, the partnerships allows online merchants using Stripe to integrate the ability for Chinese users to pay with Alipay and WeChat Pay on their websites, the company said.

Stripe hopes the integration will help boost its revenues by allowing clients to tap China’s vast consumer market, where credit cards account for only a fraction of online spending, the company said.

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dLocal Integrates WeChat Pay, AliPay and UnionPay

dLocal has announced that it supports payments through WeChat Pay, AliPay and Union Pay on its platform.

Together, the three online payments providers cover 70% of the Chinese market which had a value of USD 2.9 trillion in online payments in 2016. The new integration allows merchants on the dLocal platform to reach 300 million Chinese consumers.

The company’s payments platform supports over 200 local payment methods used in emerging markets in APAC, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. dLocal supports local credit cards, cash payments, and bank transfers in each region. Merchants that accept payments through dLocal can enable WeChat Pay, AliPay, and Union Pay with just one click.

The cross-border ecommerce market in China is booming. According to Boston Consulting Group, Chinese consumers spent about USD 750 billion online in 2016 and the ecommerce market will continue to grow by 20% annually.