Stripe just announced a new global partnership with Alipay, operated by Ant Financial, unlocking the Chinese consumer market for Stripe-powered businesses around the world.
Starting today, businesses on Stripe can begin accepting Alipay on their websites in just a few clicks. For the first time, eligible businesses can activate Alipay right from their Stripe dashboards, without the need for additional developer work or approval processes. In addition, the Alipay integration will support both one-time and recurring payments, allowing SaaS and subscription services to accept Alipay.
According to a 2016 survey by the Financial Times, over 80% of respondents living in first-tier Chinese cities cited Alipay as the most frequently used payment platform, greater than those who used credit cards, debit cards and cash. It’s necessary for Western businesses looking to expand into the vast Chinese market to adopt payment methods such as Alipay that is trusted and widely used by Chinese consumers.
Stripe aims to build a unified infrastructure for the internet economy,” said John Collison, president and co-founder of Stripe. “By deepening our existing partnership with Alipay, we’re enabling businesses around the world to instantly access the once-impenetrable Chinese consumer market.
Fueled by growing consumer demand for overseas products and services, a quarter of China’s population, amounting to more than half of all digital buyers, will be shopping either directly on foreign-based sites or through third parties by 2020. Moreover, mobile commerce already accounts for 71% of Chinese e-commerce, which saw sales of $376 billion in 2016 alone with 520 million active users. In China alone, Alipay already accounts for 44% of global mobile wallet spending and is on pace to reach 60% by 2020.
In our aim to get to a global cashless society, Alipay has evolved from a digital wallet into a global lifestyle enabler for Chinese consumers and travelers far beyond Chinese borders,” said Souheil Badran, President of Alipay for North America. “We’re excited to strengthen our partnership with Stripe to connect globally-minded Chinese consumers with hundreds of thousands of Stripe-powered businesses around the world.
Starting today, Alipay one-time payments will be generally available to Stripe users globally, while recurring payments will be in private beta.