Alibaba taps Adyen for payments outside China

Alibaba has added Adyen as a processor, giving the Chinese e-commerce giant an added option to acquire merchants to feed its business for Chinese travelers.

Adyen will support Alibaba and its affiliated Alipay app for transactions on AliExpress, Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com brands.

Alibaba Group sign
Signage for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is displayed at the company's offices in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, May 5, 2016. Alibaba's HK$1 billion fund for Hong Kong entrepreneurs is investing in GoGoVan, a hauling and delivery service that's one of the city's biggest startups, and other online services. Photographer: Justin Chin/Bloomberg
Justin Chin/Bloomberg

Ant, Alipay and Alibaba built their international business largely by acquiring local merchants through collaborations with payment processors.

Alibaba's Adyen announcement follows affiliate Ant Financial's $700 million acquisition of WordFirst, a London-based payments company, which gave Ant and its brands more of a foothold in Europe — and a counterplay against Amazon and Western Union's collaboration in the region.

Alipay, which has more than one billion users, has also entered into partnerships with First Data and Verifone, a Norwegian bank coalition called Vipps, Pakistani banks and Singapore's tourism bureau, among others.

Coming off of one of Europe's largest technology IPOs in 2018, Adyen has broadened its merchant reach through recent deals to support Interac's debit network in Canada and The Gap in Europe. Adyen's big coup in recent years was luring eBay's payment processing business away from PayPal in 2018.

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Payment processing Alibaba China Europe
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