Alipay, China’s leading cashless payment platform and a subsidiary of Alibaba’s related company, Ant Financial, recently signed a partnership agreement with a Singapore-based digital payment provider CCPay to offer cashless payment services to retailers in Singapore. According to the agreement, CCPay will help Alipay expand the use of the cashless payment platforms in Singapore so as to give convenience to Chinese tourists here.

“The cashless payments will be first introduced by merchants around the Chinatown area”, said Jed Huang, Founder and Director of CC Financial Services, the owner of CCpay. There are plans for further expanding the services to other shopping malls in Singapore later. “With Alipay’s scale and expertise in the field of cashless payments, this collaboration with CCPay will provide a platform for merchants to facilitate safe, fast and cashless payments for the Chinese tourists in Singapore,” said Melvin Ooi, Alipay’s country manager for Singapore, Sri Lanka and Maldives.

According to Singapore Tourism Board, 1.3 million tourists from China visited Singapore from January to May 2017, many of whom have been used to shopping by swiping their phones over the Quick Response (QR) code provided by the retailers instead of paying in cash. Launched in 2004, Alipay currently has over 520 million active users, mostly in China. It is also expanding to in-store offline payments both inside and outside of China, which now are covering more than 200,000 retail stores overseas and support settlement of 18 currencies. CCPay, founded in March 2017, is Singapore’s digital payment solutions provider for online, mobile and in-store payment. It is one of the earliest companies to create QR payment in Singapore.