South Africa’s fintech firm Peach Payments has partnered with Alipay and ACI Worldwide to bring Alipay acceptance to Africa for the first time in a move set to enable South African businesses to accept payments from over 10,000 Chinese tourists via their Alipay wallets.
According to Co-founder of Peach Payments, Rahul Jain, “At Peach Payments we’re continuously thinking about how we can help our merchants sell more and sell more efficiently. Our partnership with Alipay and ACI Worldwide is yet another step we have driven over the past few years to help the online commerce market grow in South Africa.”
ACI Worldwide provides real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, while Alipay operated by Ant Financial Services Group, is an online and payment platform with more than 450 million active Chinese users. Alipay allows merchants to effectively gain share in the world’s largest eCommerce market through a payment method and lifestyle platform Chinese travellers know and trust.
“Alipay has been providing its users across China with easier, safer and greener lifestyles. Bringing Alipay to Africa gives African merchants another way to engage with and serve Chinese visitors,” said Rita Liu, Head of Alipay EMEA. “We are happy to work with local partners to provide better travel experiences to Chinese tourists, and to create more value for local commerce.”
The three will help South Africa’s tour firm City Sightseeing, which operates open-top ‘hop on hop off’ bus tours in Cape Town and Johannesburg, will be the first local merchant in Africa to offer Alipay as part of its mobile and eCommerce strategy, to capture the growing Chinese visitor market in South Africa.
China is the world’s largest outbound tourism market, with 135 million travelling abroad in 2016, representing a 6 percent growth on the previous year. Adventure-seeking Chinese tourists are increasingly looking to African destinations, and in South Africa alone there was a 93 percent rise in Chinese arrivals in 2016.
“We are proud to build upon our successful relationship with Peach Payments, enabling them to be the first PSP in South Africa to give their merchants the ability to accept Alipay,” said Markus Rinderer, senior vice president, ACI Worldwide. “Although Alipay has been supported through our eCommerce Payments solution for two years now, launching in Africa brings us to a new and exciting phase in our relationship, as we move closer to our vision of enabling universal connectivity across the payments ecosystem.”
