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Here’s Why China’s Alipay Is Teaming Up With France’s Ingenico

Alipay, the online payments platform run by Alibaba spin-out Ant Financial, is teaming up with Ingenico , the French payments processor.

The partnership is partly aimed at Chinese tourists visiting Europe—Alipay will be embedded into Ingenico’s in-store payment gateway, so the Alipay app will work in European stores featuring the terminals.

Ingenico’s terminals already accept payments via apps such as Apple Pay and Android Pay.

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Meanwhile, Ingenico will also use the partnership to offer Chinese merchants its payment-processing services.

The companies already had a degree of cooperation, with Ingenico processing Alipay users’ cross-border online transactions for airlines such as Etihad and Air France.

Ant Financial claims Alipay has 450 million active users in China, and the two companies reckon around 10 million Chinese people arrive in Europe each year.

Source: fortune.com February 19, 2017 – 21:17