Singapore’s NETS Payments, in partnership with Ant Financial, plans to make instant cross-border payments early next year

On the morning of November 8, 2021, local digital payment companies NETS and Ant Group jointly announced at the Singapore FinTech Festival that NETS plans to deploy a solution for Alipay Plus on its platform.

NETS plans to integrate Alipay+ to further enhance the digital payment capabilities of its local merchants, a partnership that will help further enhance the digital payment capabilities of local merchants.

Launched by Ant Financial Group in 2020, Alipay+ is a digital payment solution that allows enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to accept cross-border payment methods. In addition, Alipay+ also provides merchants with digital marketing solutions.



With Alipay Plus, foreign users can make payments in Singapore through their Home Mainstream e-wallet and transfer them to the accounts of local merchants via NETS. Payments from foreign users are made in local currency, and local merchants receive the exchanged S$ payment in real time.

By deploying the Alipay+ solution, NETS can facilitate seamless transactions between local businesses and global consumers visiting Singapore, potentially connecting its Singapore merchants with global e-wallet users.

In Southeast Asia, Ant Financial focuses on providing business-to-business (B2B) financial technology services, with a particular focus on the SME sector. Ant Financial has been strengthening its partnership with payment providers and e-wallets in Southeast Asia since 2016, and even after the IPO was halted, Ant Financial’s partnership with fintech companies in Southeast Asia continued.




Ant Financial didn’t say how many countries Alipay+ includes mainstream electronic wallets. In recent years, however, Ant Financial has invested in a number of mainstream e-wallets in Southeast Asia, including Ascend Money (Thailand), eMonkey (Vietnam), TNG Digital (Malaysia), Dana (Indonesia) and GCash (Philippines).

Having the most extensive QR payment network in Singapore makes NETS an ideal partner for Alipay, the inbound wallet provider.

Currently, NETS Payments and Ant Financial Group are working to integrate the Alipay+ solution into NETS ‘merchant portal, which is expected to be operational by early 2022.

According to media reports, on November 2, Singapore Blockchain Association and Ant Chain signed a memorandum of cooperation on November 1. In the future, the two sides will work closely to promote the further popularization and development of blockchain technology in Singapore and the entire Southeast Asia region.