• Published on 14 November 2023
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Ant International unveils strategy for global commerce with payment and digital tech

Ant International, a digital payment and financial services leader dedicated to building an inclusive and sustainable global commerce ecosystem, today unveils its strategy in digital payment and digital commerce for global merchants at its flagship Voyage Conference, in Singapore.

Yang Peng, president of Ant International said: “Despite the uncertainties in the global economy, trends like evolving financial infrastructure, accelerating digitalisation and swift advances on the tech frontier present unprecedented opportunities for merchants all around the world seeking to achieve new growth, especially for small businesses that aspire to overcome the digital divide.”

Yang said: “Travel, trade, technology and talent are the cornerstones of global inclusion and prosperity. We will accelerate innovations in digital payment and digital commerce to link up these areas of global collaboration.”

Digital payment and digital commerce solutions across four pillars

To realise the 4T vision and provide support to merchants, particularly in helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) achieve their growth goals, Ant International has established a robust global compliance and service structure over the years. Additionally, it boasts an extensive coverage worldwide, especially in Asia, deep expertise in digitalisation, and a continuously expanding repertoire of cutting-edge technologies.

The company now focuses on four areas of innovations:

Alipay+ cross-border mobile payment service connects over 88 million merchants to 1.5 billion consumer accounts on over 25 e-wallets and banking apps in 57 countries and regions, allowing consumers to travel and pay worry-free across borders, and merchants to build out cross-border consumer engagement and digital marketing.

The service builds on Alipay+’s extensive regional partnerships, including those with national QR schemes such as Singapore’s SGQR, Malaysia’s PayNet, South Korea’s ZeroPay, and Sri Lanka's LankaPay.

Douglas L. Feagin, senior vice president of Ant Group and head of Alipay+ said: “Alipay+ focuses on bridging various payment methods and promoting mobile interoperability across Asia and beyond. Its aim is to enable people to travel and live worry-free, while offering businesses, both large and small, new digital avenues for growth. We are proud of how through Alipay+, tens of millions of even mom-and-pop stalls can reach and transact with international travelers on the same basis as much larger enterprises such as luxury stores.”

Antom merchant payment services help global merchants to engage digitally with consumers in Asia and beyond.

Gary Liu, head of merchant payment services at Ant International said: “With our AI-driven payment and digital marketing engine, we offer our merchants the broadest consumer reach in Asia and globally, and help them collect payments and grow revenue.”

WorldFirst digital payment and financial services for cross-border trade SME has served over one million SME to grow internationally with its World Account, by connecting small traders to over 120 global marketplaces and conduct secure and fast payment transactions in over 40 currencies.

Clara Shi, CEO of WorldFirst said: “Today's cross-border trade is led by young entrepreneurs who are digital natives with global ambitions. With World Account, we aim to help them acquire next-gen CFO capabilities to sell, manage and grow across marketplaces and regions.”

Building on its success in China and Singapore, Shi said, WorldFirst plans to expand its SME e-commerce digital finance solutions across Southeast Asia in 2023 and 2024.

ANEXT Bank, a digital wholesale bank regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, focuses on enabling effortless and accessible financial services to SME. In staying true to its mission to serve the underserved financial needs of micro businesses and to help SME achieve their cross-border ambitions, the bank now counts 68% of its customers as micro-SME. The bank has also seen an average of 40% month-on-month increase in cross-border transactions and expects to see these numbers grow as it embarks on more embedded financing collaborations with industry partners.

Toh Su Mei, CEO of ANEXT Bank, said: "We recognise the diverse needs of SME and believe that the way to alleviate the various stress and spillover effect from the macro environment is to work very closely with industry partners who have a first-hand view of their customers' pain points."

Continued investments in cutting-edge digital technology solutions

Ant International began its journey by supporting the rapid rise of e-commerce and cross-border tourism in China. Over the years, Ant International has built up a repertoire of foundational technology capabilities to support long-term growth across its main business pillars.

• Wallet Tech offers full-stack architectural solutions and future-ready capabilities for payment apps;
• Payment Tech enables robust payment processing with improved conversion and user engagement;
• Credit Tech achieves an industry-leading low NPL ratio and configuration for scalability;
• Platform Tech comes with a series of proprietary blockchain and AI technologies; and
• Risk Tech is powered by world-leading graph computing and risk detection algorithms.

“Together with our partners, we will build enduring local commitments to bring the world more small and beautiful changes,” said Yang Peng.

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker