China's Ant Group doubles down on global expansion with cross-border payments offering Alipay+

Key Facts

The group’s global arm, Ant International, introduced Alipay+ in 2020, allowing foreigners to use apps from their home countries to make payments in China and other countries by scanning QR codes of Ant Group’s largely domestically-focused platform Alipay.
Ant had invested in country-specific e-wallets across Asia, but the CEOs wanted to take their products overseas, said Feagin, also president of Ant International.
There are also growth opportunities in the firm’s established markets like Singapore and South Korea, for instance a lot of people use mobile payments in China, but still far fewer compared with people in other countries, said Feagin.
“When you think about the big markets that receive a lot of tourists, like Thailand and Japan, the chances for payment from mobile apps to grow are enormous.”