Alipay, the online and mobile payment system owned by Alibaba’s financial affiliate Ant Financial, is set to launch in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Phillipines.
The move is the result of a merger between Ant Financial and HelloPay Group, the company behind the online payment platform, helloPay, which was established for use on the ecommerce site Lazada.
The deal will see helloPay rebranded as Alipay and its staff will become part of the Ant Financial Services Group. However, the rebranded platform will remain a separate entity to Alipay, all its features and services will remain the same and it will continue to provide payment services on the Lazada platform.
Douglas Feagin, senior vice president of Ant Financial, said, “There will be no impact to helloPay’s users and payment partners. We will continue to innovate and provide users with safe, fast and convenient payment services.”
HelloPay was established in November 2014 by the Southeast Asian ecommerce site Lazada to provide payment solutions for its platform.
The merger and rebrand is the latest move in an expansion strategy by Ant Financial, which aims to grow its footprint outside of China, where its Alipay app has over 450 million users.
Ant Financial recently invested $200 million in South Korea’s mobile financial platform Kakao Pay. It also has investments in Thai financial technology firm Ascend Money, Indian mobile payment website Paytm and the Philippines financial technology company Mynt.
This week the company increased its bid to buy US-based money transfer firm Moneygram, offering $1.2 billion.
