Fintech giant Ant Group, back in Beijing’s good graces, uses Alipay+ to burnish Hangzhou’s tech image for Asian Games

Ant Group, which was forced to pull its US$40 billion initial public offering at the last minute in 2020, is regaining the government’s favour as its payment service Alipay is promoted as a key element to a successful Asian Games, the biggest public relations event for the city of Hangzhou this year.

In the downtown centre of the capital city of eastern Zhejiang province, where Jack Ma started Alibaba Group Holding and later its spin-off Ant, nearly all stores now prominently display their digital payment codes, promoting Hangzhou as a cashless society. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

In addition to the usual codes for Alipay and WeChat Pay, from rival Tencent Holdings, which are ubiquitous across China, an increasing number of stores in Hangzhou include signs in English reading, “pay with your home e-wallet”, with the logos of other Asian digital wallet services displayed on the sign. This is part of Ant’s efforts to improve the experience for foreigners travelling in the city, particularly for the Asian Games, which were postponed from last year and run from September 23 to October 8.

Ant has worked with other companies to make its quick-response (QR) codes compatible with a number of different digital wallets, meaning many visitors from around Asia can use whatever apps they already have on their phones to pay for goods. Merchants do not need to change anything, according to Alipay+, the global cross-border digital payments and marketing solution from Ant, which facilitates the payments and converts the currencies from overseas wallets.