Through the collaboration, Worldline enhances its payment offering for in-store and e-Commerce merchants across Europe, helping them to better serve customers through expanded mobile payments and other digital payment methods. Worldline is the first acquirer to enter into a full-scale multi-country integration with Alipay+.

Launched in 2020, Alipay+ is a suite of global cross-border digital payments and marketing solutions operated by Ant Group. It supports a wide range of digital payments methods, including e-wallets and bank apps, such as Touch ‘n Go eWallet in Malaysia, TrueMoney in Thailand, GCash in the Philippines, Kakao Pay in South Korea, as well as Alipay and AlipayHK in China.

With a rollout expected to start in 2022, the enhanced payments solution works with all Worldline terminals and applications and provides the same QR code for each new digital payment method. This brings ease of use to merchants as no change is required in merchants’ operations and the payment method recognition works fully automatically. Merchants also benefit from increased customer relations as online shoppers and travelers from Asia will experience a familiar, secure, seamless and entirely automated payment flow.

Merchants from all sectors, including retail, F&B and hospitality across Europe, can simply reap the benefits by upgrading the fully integrated POS and e-Commerce solution from Worldline to enable Alipay+ acceptance, through effortless software updates with no additional investment.

Vincent Roland, Managing Director Merchant Services at Worldline said: “We are very happy to extend our partnership with Ant Group which has been a trusted partner for several years. We are particularly proud to be the first acquirer to form this partnership in Europe with such a globally recognised and respected brand. At Worldline, our key ambition is to create maximum simplicity for both merchants and their customers in order to provide a smooth payment journey. By supporting the acceptance of Alipay+, we will help our customers in Europe to offer Asian shoppers and tourists with a secure, trusted and easy payment experience.”

Angel Zhao, President of Ant Group’s International Business Group said: "Worldline and Ant Group are longstanding and trusted partners. Therefore, we know Worldline's expertise will make a fundamental contribution to our mission of enabling European companies to reach, target and sell to global consumers, enabling payments, promotions and digital services with a simple POS & E-Commerce integration. Alipay+ is a suite of innovative solutions already connected with more than one billion customers in Asia. It lets users interact with merchants, natively from their favourite digital payment methods, wallets or mobile banking, with a secure and seamless experience. Worldline is the perfect partner to leverage Alipay+ features to help European merchants accelerate their globalization and digitization journey."

The integration is also part of Worldline’s ongoing efforts to reinforce its long-lasting global partnership with Ant Group. Worldline and Ant Group have been engaged in a partnership since 2016 and have together laid the foundation for merchants from more than 30 European countries to be connected to Alipay, thus already having benefitted from access to the growing number of Chinese tourists travelling to Europe in the past five years.