Alipay is one of the largest payment services in the world, with around 700 million users. The Chinese provider wants to expand its offer in this country and is now cooperating with the German Fintech Solarisbank. The Berliners are to help Alipay to better serve Chinese tourists in Europe with mobile payment. The majority of tourists prefer mobile payment methods, because credit cards are less common, it is said by Alipay as a reason.
Solarisbank’s banking as a service platform provides Alipay with the ideal technical and regulatory support to further expand the comapny’s dealer network. And Xiaoquiong Hu, Alipay’s head of business development, said this in a statement. Jörg Diewald, CCO of Solarisbank, believes that, for European retailers, however it will be easier to integrate Alipay.
The Solarisbank will take care of the transactions and a fee which depends on sales involved. Chinese tourists spend around $ 260 billion on travelers worldwide. According to a study by the tour operator Tui, the number of Chinese tourists in Europe is increasing every year. About 13 million Chinese tourists are expected to travel to Europe in 2017.
Recently, prominent investors put a lot of money into this Berlin’s fintech. But the business figures are rather disappointing in terms of the company’s ambitions. Because Solarisbank comes only on real returns of two million euros.
Also published on Medium.