Ant Group

Retail and hospitality payments software provider Veea Inc. is partnering with cross-border mobile payments provider Citcon to allow businesses using Veea services in the U.S. to accept Alipay and WeChat Pay mobile payments.

Ant Financial, the Chinese payments giant controlled by Jack Ma, is expected to close a fundraising of at least $10 billion in the next few days, attracting Carlyle Group and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as first-time investors, according to people familiar with the matter.

China hasn't exactly opened its arms wide to embrace U.S. payments companies, but the nation has gradually become more accepting of the foreign payments businesses that view its tech-savvy population as a lucrative market.

Instead of expanding Alipay’s geographic reach across the U.S. and Canada, Alipay is doubling down on merchant acceptance in urban areas and tourist zones to drive more spending volume.

Ant Financial Services Group has formed a strategic partnership with bKash Limited, the mobile payments platform Bangladesh’s central bank established to expand financial inclusion.

Apple has made moves to acknowledge Alipay's dominance in the market, such as partnering with Alibaba Financial affiliate Alibaba to accept Alipay payments in China's Apple stores.

Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that operates Alipay, is planning an IPO that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars — but the funds it could raise are secondary to the consumer population it already controls.

Some of the biggest digital wallets in the world — including Alipay and WeChat Pay — succeed because they have very little in common with other big-brand wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.

China’s Alipay mobile wallet is now accepted by airport retailers in the Middle East and Africa through a collaboration between Qatar Airways and Wirecard.

With 1.3 billion people who are mostly unbanked in an economy where 85% to 95% of all transactions are still conducted in cash, few other markets have such an opportunity to modernize payments.