“The deal is unlikely to have much of an undermining effect on rivals like Apple Pay and Android Pay, with Alipay aiming mainly to serve its Chinese customers as they visit the States.”
Alipay is coming to the US.
It’s the latest, and perhaps most significant, move on the part of the China-based mobile payments service to expand beyond the domestic market it dominates alongside WeChat Pay, with Alipay also having recently moved into the French market thanks to a deal with merchant network Ingenico, and even taken to the skies with Finnish airline Finnair. Now, a new deal with credit card payment processor First Data will bring the service to about four million businesses in America.
The deal is unlikely to have much of an undermining effect on rivals like Apple Pay and Android Pay, with Alipay aiming mainly to serve its Chinese customers as they visit the States. Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan goes so far as to argue that it will actually help such rivals by making the idea of mobile payments more familiar in America.
In any case, the deal certainly points to the rising prominence of mPayment services, with at least some analysts expecting considerable growth for all the major players.
Sources: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, BBC News
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