Samsung Electronics today announced the partnership with Ant Financial Services Group, parent company of Alipay, to expand Samsung Pay in China.
Users can now employ their Alipay account on eligible Samsung mobile phones with Samsung Pay.
This means that after registering their Alipay account into Samsung Pay, users simply can begin paying with their mobile phones by swiping up from the Lock Screen, Home Screen or Sleep Mode, selecting the Alipay QR code, and holding the smartphone up to the merchant’s scanner to scan the QR code at the register.
Samsung Pay is currently available as an option among other payment systems on the Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy A5(2016), Galaxy A7(2016), Galaxy A9(2016) and Galaxy A9 Pro in China with the opportunity to support additional models in the future.
As of 8th July 2016, Alipay had more than 400 million annual active users (80% of them active mobile users) and was accepted as a payment option at 130,000 restaurants accross China, including 5,000 KFC.
Big supermarket chains such as Carrefour, Ole and Walmart also accept Alipay at their check-out counters. Alipay is currently the leading mobile payments player in China.
On the contrary, Samsung just has a 7.7% market share in China, where the Korean brand was not many years ago the 2nd player in the mobile phone market.
The Korean multinational launched Samsung Pay last March in China. Since then the Korean multinational has signed serveral partnerships (with China Union Pay and now with Ant Financial) trying to face Apple Pay, which is available from February this year in the Asian country.
Samsung underscores that Samsung Pay and Alipay are committed to bringing ground breaking fin-tech innovations to China in order to deliver on the promise of a true digital wallet.
Fan Zhiming, President of Payment Business Unit at Ant Financial, said, “Alipay covers the vast majority of online payment use cases. At the same time, it also developed a variety of offline use cases, including restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, taxis, hospitals and public services. The technology integration facilitated by this partnership with Samsung Electronics will make the payment process faster and more convenient when users make payments at stores where Alipay is accepted.”
Image over the headline.- Alipay QR displayed on a Samsung smartphone. © Samsung.
