This enhances Chinese travellers’ shopping experience and builds on the recent partnership Ingenico formed with Alipay, China’s largest mobile payment and lifestyle platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group.

Lagardère Travel Retail’s objective was to deploy Alipay across 83 of its outlets operated by Société de Distribution Aéroportuaire, in time for the Chinese New Year. With the support of its bank, BNP Paribas, and of Ingenico Group, the duty-free operator is now able to offer Chinese tourists their preferred payment method. For the retailer, broadening its already large payment application portfolio was all the more important as Chinese visitors represent a significant segment of its customer base and as Alipay boasts more than 450 million users worldwide.

Ingenico’s Axis centralized in-store payment solution, already in place at Lagardère Travel Retail’s shops, allowed for a swift roll-out of Alipay. The duty-free operator also renewed the terminals of its affected shops with Ingenico Lane/5000 devices, the most advanced model of Ingenico’s new range terminals designed-for-retail. Fitted with a large touchscreen and combining payment acceptance and services, these drive consumer engagement.

"We are really pleased with this achievement for the benefit of our long-standing client Lagardère Travel Retail.’ said Guillaume Pascal, Managing Director for Ingenico Group in France. ‘It illustrates our ability to deliver in a few weeks a fully integrated deployment of Alipay in a retail checkout environment.’