ALIPAY’S RITA LIU ON CONSUMER PAIN POINTS DRIVING GLOBAL EXPANSION

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In this episode

Alipay dominates financial news. On FinTech Insider, we joke about creating a jingle for ‘Alipay does a thing.’ What’s really interesting to us about Alipay is the Ant Financial business model of ‘payments as a wedge product’ to drive other financial services. We talk to a lot of banks now that want to become marketplaces, having looked at Alibaba and Alipay as the model to copy. In this episode, Rita Liu, Head of Alipay Europe, Middle East, and Africa, talks to us about Alipay’s growth ambitions and why China is such an exciting region for FinTech and financial services.

“We have been active in the global market for a while, all driven by our consumers’ needs,” Rita says. “Alipay is the most popular online payment option for Chinese buyers. So we have been distributing Alipay as a payment option for ecommerce players outside of China.

“In China, mobile wallet has become an increasingly popular way to pay in the physical world, and that is driving us to do the same in the global market. We follow the Chinese tourists’ footprint in the world, to enable the merchants to be able to offer the same experience that our users can have in China while they travel. So that’s why we have started to develop merchant acceptance in the physical world, to accept Alipay.”