DBS and Ant International have expanded their partnership to scale cross-border payment and fintech solutions and to drive inclusive growth.
Following this announcement, the partnership will enable DBS PayLah! users to scan Alipay+ QR codes to pay at several merchants across over 100 markets.
In addition, the collaboration is expected to leverage DBS’ digital banking capabilities and Ant International’s improved financial technologies, such as AI and blockchain, in order to scale cross-border payments, strengthen connectivity, and drive developments in the financial ecosystem.
The collaboration’s focus on scaling digital payments and accelerating fintech development
According to the official press release, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) commits to DBS and Ant International’s key businesses, including Alipay+, Antom, WorldFirst, and Bettr Platform Tech, in order to benefit from a comprehensive partnership spanning several areas of strategic cooperation.
These areas of collaboration are expected to include the process of boosting cross-border payments connectivity (DBS PayLah! will join the Alipay+ payments ecosystem, enabling multiple DBS PayLah! users to make QR code payments to several businesses), as well as exploring near-instant remittances to consumer accounts on Alipay+. With this in mind, Ant International and DBS will continue exploring a bank-to-wallet solution that enables real-time remittances between DBS customers and several user accounts on the Alipay+ ecosystem. The tool will also leverage ISO 20022 messaging standards and utilise the SWIFT network, as both organisations are exploring further secure solutions to improve and simplify remittances between DBS customers and Alipay+ ecosystem users.
In addition, this partnership will also focus on supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on the digital transformation journey, as DBS will partner with Antom, Ant International’s unified merchant payment and digitisation services provider, in order to explore potential solutions that are set to support SMEs in optimising their digital transformation journey. An example being considered includes the overall Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based Antom Agentic Payment solution, which has been developed in order to integrate Antom’s Alternative Payment Method checkout capabilities, secure payment mandate model, and trusted AI technologies. Furthermore, DBS will also work with WorldFirst to scale up same-day and near-instant cross-border payment solutions for SME clients.
Included in the benefits of the collaboration is also the process of fostering development in regional fintech ecosystems, as DBS and Ant International reiterated their shared commitment to driving growth in the financial sector by deepening their existing collaboration on tokenised deposits.
