Ant Financial Services Group's acquisition of a stake in Swedish fintech Klarna Holding AB is the latest sign that Chinese fintech firms are hungry to capture a slice of Europe's lucrative payments market.
Ant Financial, whose mobile payment app Alipay has more than a billion users, and fellow Chinese tech Tencent Holdings Ltd., the parent of so called "super-app" WeChat Pay, are eager to serve Chinese tourists who spend many hundreds of dollars each on shopping trips in Europe — and to potentially draw in European customers too, industry experts say.
The deal to buy a minority stake in Klarna, best known for its buy-now-pay-later solutions for shoppers, builds on an existing partnership between Klarna and Alipay whereby customers of the latter can use Klarna's pay-later product.
Alipay is increasingly accepted by merchants in Europe, although at present it caters only to Asian expats and tourists. It struck a deal with French payments firm Worldline SA in November 2019 that lets customers with Alipay digital wallets pay at any Worldline card terminal in Europe, and in January this year it announced a partnership with London-based WorldRemit Ltd. allowing Alipay users to access WorldRemit services in its app.
Most recently, it partnered with U.K. online money transfer service TransferWise Ltd. to allow for instant transfers, and it has also been partnering with businesses in areas popular with Chinese visitors, including restaurants in London's Chinatown.
WeChat Pay is also bullish on Europe, saying at a recent event in London that the continent is its "next key market."
Tencent and Ant Financial did not respond to requests for comment.
Spending power
Chinese tourists have spending power and prefer to pay by mobile apps when abroad, according to research by Nielson. During recent trips, Chinese tourists spent an average of $762 per person on shopping, while tourists of other nationalities spent an average of $486. Nine out of 10 said they would prefer to pay for purchases with mobiles, according to 2017 research.
According to Hui Gong, a lecturer in finance at the University of Westminster, London, recent plays by Chinese fintechs in Europe, Alipay in particular, could be the start of much greater ambitions.
Seizing the overseas Chinese market is a first step by Alipay, he said, adding that he thinks it also has aspirations to become a payment channel, the same as Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., rather than merely a renowned payments company.
"In that regard, the European market will definitely be a critical part of its jigsaw puzzle," he said in an email.
For Jordan McKee, research director at 451 Research, an S&P Global company, it is clear that Alipay and WeChat Pay are have got their sights set on European growth. Their strategy so far is to partner with hospitality companies and retailers of high-end and luxury goods, he said in an interview.
Attractive for retailers
Retailers in Europe appear receptive to taking payment via Alipay or WeChat Pay, he added. Even though the cost for processing such transactions is slightly higher for the vendor than other forms of payment such as credit or debit card, Chinese customers are more inclined to make purchases when they see that WeChat Pay or Alipay are accepted, he said.
The two apps are likely to continue to seek alliances with European payments companies, according to McKee.
They may also look to expand their customer base beyond the core market of Asian visitors and expats by trying to capture European customers as well, he said.
Rory O'Neill, chief marketing officer at Planet, a London-based payments consultancy, also predicts more expansion from the Chinese super apps in Europe, but foresees a more indirect approach.
In an interview, he said Alipay and WeChat Pay will certainly form partnerships with companies that understand the EU payments landscape, but whether they would make a bid for European customers is less certain.
The orientation of these apps is a bit different, he said — WeChat Pay and Alipay are "full lifestyle apps" from which customers can shop, pay for items and receive marketing promotions and adverts, which makes them rather different from the single-purpose apps that European consumers are used to.
If it is new, non-Chinese customers that WeChat Pay or Alipay want to acquire, then India's "fragmented" mobile wallet market might be a more natural place to start than Europe, O'Neill said.
Ant Financial participated in a $2 billion fundraising for Indian digital payments company Paytm, investing an undisclosed sum, in October last year. Tencent has also been active in acquiring stakes in Indian companies, but it has leaned more towards tech and retail companies rather than payments, with recent investments including a stake in medical referrals platform Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and Swiggy, a food delivery service.