On November 17, 2020, Shopify announced its partnership with Alipay, Asia’s most popular digital wallet platform. This collaboration takes cross-border commerce for Shopify’s merchants to the next level.
Previously, Shopify merchants offered Alipay as a payment method, but through third-party providers. But now through their gateway, Shopify merchants will be able to offer a frictionless payment experience by offering their preferred payment method.
Their new payment gateway will enable Shopify merchants to accept payments through Alipay seamlessly since there will be a more direct integration. There are currently more than one billion active users in China annually. It is expected to expand a lot more to hundreds of millions across Asia.
Targeting The Major Holidays
Shopify hopes to help its merchants assist its customers through major events such as Lunar Year Holiday which takes place in February and 11.11 Global Festival, also known as Singles Day or Double 11.
Every year in November, Single’s Day alone attracts hundreds of millions of shoppers. Based on Alibaba’s numbers, the 2020 event had a gross merchandise volume of (GMV) of $74 billion throughout the 11-day campaign.
U.S.-based businesses generated over $5.4 billion in sales from Chinese consumers. This makes the U.S. the top international market for the festival.
According to Kaz Nejatian, VP, product, merchant services at Shopify:
“Reaching consumers across Asia is an enormous growth opportunity for our merchants, and Alipay has brought inclusive financial services to more than one billion people in China. Through today’s partnership, we’ll help our merchants provide the best possible shopping experiences for this new audience of cross-border consumers”.
This new Alibaba gateway is currently available for Shopify merchants within the US. However, it is expected to expand to more markets in the near future, including: India, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
Alipay Joins Forces With Shopify To Serve Hong Kong Merchants
On August 4, 2021, Alipay announced that it has broadened its partnership with Shopify to Hong Kong merchants. By using just a single integration, Hong Kong SME of Shopify can now connect with users of the four leading Asian digital wallets. These include: AlipayHK (Hong Kong), Alipay(Mainland China), Touch n’ Go (Malaysia), and GCash (The Philippines). There are no setup fees for this service.
Now, merchants can utilize its inclusive payment gateway services to reach over 1.2 billion users of e-wallets all over Asia.
Weathering Economic Storms And More Partnerships
The year 2020 has been a crazy one for all businesses worldwide. The Canadian commerce platform worked tirelessly to help struggling merchants weather the massive economic storm due to the pandemic.
They offered advice on how to adjust to shifting consumer behaviors to tackling inventory and production challenges. They also helped businesses pivot to the e-Commerce arena as shoppers moved online almost entirely.
This sudden shift to online purchases helped Shopify massively to beat Wall Street’s predictions for its third-quarter earnings. Recently the company partnered with TikTok to assist its one-million-plus merchants to promote their products effortlessly on this video-sharing app.
Nejatian added:
“At Shopify, we believe in a world of borderless commerce and are focused on helping our merchants build thriving businesses””not just within their own markets, but on a truly international scale”.
In Closing
Since its initial collaboration back in November 2020, Alipay and Shopify have been facilitating the acceptance of payments for merchants across North America and it is slowly expanding its reach across the world. This is in line with Alipay’s mission of “making it easy to do business anywhere”.