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Ant Group’s Alipay+ payment service expands in Japan as tourism reopens through partnership with Universal Studios park
- The partnership will allow the theme park to accept payments via e-wallets from China, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand
- The deal comes as Japan lifts a daily cap on inbound arrivals and resumes a visa waiver policy – amounting to a full reopening
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Chinese financial technology giant Ant Group has signed a partnership that will allow tourists visiting Universal Studios Japan from several countries to use the Alipay+ mobile-payment service to make purchases.
More than 1 million merchants in Japan now accept Alipay+, according to Ant Group, which is affiliated with Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.
Universal Studios Japan theme park in Osaka will introduce Alipay+’s QR code cross-border digital payments solution, which will allow the park to accept payments via e-wallets from China, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.
The deal comes as Japan lifts a daily cap on inbound arrivals and resumes a visa waiver policy – amounting to a full reopening. The policy shift, which started on Tuesday, comes after nearly two and a half years of pandemic entry restrictions.
Ant Group is pushing Alipay+ as an underlying solution for payment service providers, and it already supports e-wallets operated by AlipayHK in Hong Kong, GCash in the Philippines, Touch ‘n Go in Malaysia and TrueMoney in Thailand.
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