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Alipay sees surge of retailer adoption as government backs cashless

May 14, 2019

Alipay, the world’s most widely used mobile wallet with about a billion users, said its expansion into the Japanese market has seen a six-fold surge in retail adoption, with more than 300,000 merchants accepting the mobile payment app as of the first quarter of 2019.

Alipay said the growth, from about 50,000 merchants compared to a year ago, is due in part to support by the Japanese government.

Japan is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese tourists, according to  Alipay data, and the company is working with other digital wallet partners to drive more business to the country. Alipay works with digital wallet partners like Paytm in India, Thailand’s TrueMoney, GCash in the Philippines and kakaopay in South Korea.

"Alipay has been driving technology support to our nine e-wallet partners to enhance their cross-border payment capabilities, and hopefully to bring more Asian customers to Japan to continue to revitalize the local economy," Eric Jing, chairman and chief executive of Ant Financial, said in a press release.

"We are dedicated to serving small and micro businesses throughout the world through our technology," he said. "Digital wallets like Alipay are not only convenient payment tools, but also smart marketing platforms to connect merchants and their potential customers before, during and after their potential visits to Japan."

Alipay officials said that during China's four-day Labor Day holiday period in May, Japan was ranked as the company's fourth largest destination in the world in terms of total spending and that average spending per person rose 25%.

China is the single largest tourism market for Japan, with the country accounting for 37% of the 31 million tourists that visited in 2018, according to Alipay officials. Tourists from Asia accounted for 86% of all of the country's international tourist traffic, or about 26 million people.

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