Alipay has more than 300,000 merchants connected in Japan

More than 300,000 merchants have been connected to Alipay in Japan, said Jing xiandong(Eric Jing), chairman and chief executive officer of China’s ant financial services group, at a forum conference in Tokyo on 13th.

According to public data, Alipay entered the Japanese market in 2015, covering major retailers, restaurant chains and airports in major cities. By the end of 2017, Alipay had signed 45,000 stores in Japan.




In the past May Day golden week, statistics from Alipay showed that Japan ranked fourth in the number of transactions in the world, has nearly tied the third place in South Korea, the per capita transaction amount of 25% higher than the same period last year, is one of the world’s best performing markets.

Together, Alipay and its strategic partners now serve more than 1 billion users, concentrated across Asia. Jing Xiandong, said Japan was facing a “1 billion Asian consumer” opportunity in the digital age and that Alipay would work with strategic partners to bring more Asian consumers to Japan.

In the future, Alipay will continue to provide technical support to its wallet partners in various countries, leading more tourists to visit Japan, and with Japanese merchants to provide tourists with a variety of convenient services through the mobile payment platform to promote inbound consumption.




More than 90 percent of Chinese tourists said they would be more willing to spend money if they saw merchants connected to Alipay overseas, according to a report released by Nielsen, a well-known research institution, in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Nearly 60 per cent of overseas merchants connected to Alipay reported revenue and traffic growth.

In recent years, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan has been rising.

In 2017, the per capita consumption of Chinese mainland tourists to Japan was 230,000 yen, ranking first, accounting for 38.4% of the total consumption of Japanese foreign tourists, up 14.9% year-on-year.

According to the data released by Japan tourism agency, the total number of tourists to Japan in 2018 exceeded 31 million, among which the number of tourists from China reached over 8.3 million, accounting for 27% of the total, and the number of tourists from Asia reached about 26 million, accounting for 86% of the total.

Japan’s 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will usher in a large number of visitors to Japan.




Ant financial chairman and chief executive Jing xiandong(Eric Jing) said publicly in Japan that Alipay could serve as a “bridge between inbound tourists and local businessmen” and that it would help boost the local economy. Not only in Tokyo and other metropolitan areas to promote Alipay, but also hope that more enterprises and shops from all over Japan to use Alipay, so that inbound consumption more convenient, but also to promote the development of local economy in Japan.

With the increase in Alipay’s access to merchants in Japan, it has gradually become popular in Japan. Although customers who used Alipay and WeChat to pay, most of them are Chinese who come to Japan for travel and business trips, as well as Chinese students, the Japanese use Alipay is not much. What does that mean? It shows that Japanese people do not use these China Alipay, Alipay in the Japanese market, not really into the Japanese market, after all, Japan has always been a love of cash.

This is also a good explanation for previous media reports that in Japan, Japanese people generally attach great importance to the protection of personal information. If third-party payment is used, some personal privacy will be collected as big data for third-party payment companies. In addition, in daily life, the Japanese are more accustomed to using credit cards, they feel that the use of credit cards has been very convenient, no need to use third-party means of payment.

Alipay is the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform for Ant gold operations, serving more than 1 billion users with local wallet partners around the world. Alipay’s cross-border payments, overseas swipe payment and many other services, has covered more than 50 countries and regions around the world.