Payments provider Stripe lands in Hong Kong as it partners with WeChat Pay, Alipay
US payments provider Stripe on Monday announced its entry into Hong Kong, as well as partnerships with Alipay and WeChat Pay that allows global businesses to accept these payment methods from consumers in China and the region.
Hong Kong is Stripe’s third Asian market – the company already has operations in Japan and Singapore.
Stripe, which is headquartered in San Francisco and has a valuation of US$9 billion, allows merchants to accept payments over the internet by integrating payment processing directly onto their website. This means that companies no longer have to deal with banks directly to set up a merchant account for accepting credit card payments, a process which can sometimes be cumbersome and expensive.
“Hong Kong is a natural market for us. It’s one of the main financial centres in Asia and also a very fast-growing start-up market,” John Collison, Stripe co-founder and president, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. At 26, Collison is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire and is worth at least US$1.1 billion, according to the Forbes Rich List.
“That start-up market is very export-oriented and global. What we’ve seen in our beta tests in Hong Kong is that 60 per cent of the businesses built on Stripe actually have the majority of their sales overseas – they’re not just domestically-oriented, they’re globally minded.”
Hong Kong is a natural market for us. It’s one of the main financial centres in Asia and also a very fast-growing start-up market
Two-thirds of venture-backed start-ups in Hong Kong, including companies like Grana, Tink Labs and Klook, are using Stripe to process payments, according to the company.