Mastercard connects with Alipay

According to Mastercard’s officials, by connecting with Alipay, the company expands its international payments offering, allowing its bank, fintech, and corporate customers worldwide to provide their customers with a link to this e-wallet in near real-time. Considering that disbursements and remittances represent a significant area of growth for Mastercard, the company continues to develop its solutions across additional geographies, supporting its objective of making payments faster, safer, and more convenient for users, while fostering financial inclusion.

Furthermore, by leveraging Mastercard Move, the company’s portfolio of international money transfer solutions, participating financial institutions can provide their customers with international payments to more than 180 markets, including a global payout network of over 150 currencies and 3.5 billion account holders. Representatives from Mastercard also underlined that China is currently one of the largest recipient countries globally for international remittances. With worldwide economic activities continuing to recover, the demand for cross-border payments is also set to increase. By connecting with Alipay, Mastercard expressed its enthusiasm for expanding its collaboration with the company to allow individuals globally to conduct international fund transfers to China in near real-time, simplifying the transaction for senders and receivers.

At the time of the announcement, Mastercard Move reaches approximately 10 billion endpoints globally, including bank accounts, card, wallet, and cash payout locations. The portfolio merges the capabilities of Mastercard’s existing and future money movement features, such as Mastercard Send and Mastercard Cross-Border services.

In addition to its current announcement, Mastercard entered several collaborations and introduced new solutions in recent months, aiming to advance its development strategy. For example, in March 2024, the company launched Smart Subscriptions, an Open Banking-enabled subscription management solution that was set to support financial institutions in plugging into their consumer banking application. Apart from basic management functionalities, Smart Subscriptions provides individual spend analysis, expenditure categorisation, and customised offers in a single experience. The service utilises Mastercard’s Subscriptions Control solution, which was introduced in 2023, enabling customers to cancel, pause, and resume their subscriptions.