Tuesday,19 March 2024

Alipay taps CC Financial Services to provide cashless payments in Singapore

5 min read

By The Asian Banker Live

Melvin Ooi, country manager of Alipay for Singapore, Sri Lanka and Maldives, and Jed Huang, founder and director of CC Financial Services, describe their companies' partnership as they aim to expand cashless payments to small merchants in Singapore.

Here is the transcript:

  • Alipay partners with CCPay to extend its payment services in Singapore
  • Alipay believes partnering with local businesses will help drive the company’s expansion in Southeast Asia especially in Singapore
  • The two companies target 2.86 million Chinese tourists in Singapore, which have spent $2.59 billion (S$3.52 billion) in the year 2016

Melvin Ooi: We are definitely very excited with Singapore as well as the region when it comes to the cashless, when it comes to the mobile payment, and we do see a very high growth prospect in Singapore as well as the region. So, I guess, Alipay does not require much introduction but let me check a few things. Of course, we started in 2004 and we have since grown into the largest third party payment processor as well as the leading mobile wallet provider in China.

And, of course, we are a part of the Alibaba Group and that's the synergy that binds all of us together to grow in China as well as our ambitions to grow globally. So, as the evolutions of Alipay, we started of as the payment arm of the Alibaba Group, the top arm of Alibaba and from there, we recognised the importance and also the growth in terms of the other side of the business like in-store payments, like paying the utility bills and it grows far beyond pure e-commerce. So, for us, we actually seized the opportunity, go into install payments and over the years, we have millions of merchants that's in China as far as overseas and actually setting that in-store payment service platform provided by us and with over 520 million of active users is actually bringing a lot of volume, a lot of relevance to the merchants that we partner with.

In terms of Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia in fact is one of the first few regions that we identified as a growth region and Singapore is actually the regional HQ of ours.

We see a lot of growth opportunity. We see a lot of chances for us to grow and to partner with local partners in growing the business here in Southeast Asia especially in Singapore.

And what's the benefit then?

I think, the benefits mainly come from bringing the affluent customers of Alipay into Singapore, having them to spend in Singapore as well as those who are already here in Singapore - they could be students. They could be working adults right here in Singapore where we are making their life, the transactions become more secure, more convenient, more seamless as well as a very engaging tool, where we engage both the user, as well as the merchants on a real-time basis for them to work together and enjoy the benefits to push out their products to the Chinese user.

And these are all the real-time and are also a central payment. And according to our big data as well as the... which really echoes what the estimated numbers are. I'm not going to go into the numbers.

But we do see the importance as well as the relevance and how do we deal right on this revolutions, right on this growth, to grow together in the region and especially in Singapore. We are very please to find a like minded partner like CCPay in Singapore, where we could together grow the business and improve Singapore

Jed Huang: We are one of the fastest growing merchant in Singapore. CC will constantly implement new win-win arrangements with our partners and we'll roll-out new services for our merchants market and location. We shall start here to have a Smart People's Park Complex and hopefully to develop a Smart Chinatown and going to a smart nation.

One of the things, one of the better places we have to focus is smart nation. We hope to focus in shopping districts such as Bugis, OG, Geylang, Jurong, Sentosa, and even and also especially hot land areas such as Clementi, Tampanise, etc.

What can we bring to CC merchants and to the clients?

The target markets that we have are 2.86 million Chinese tourists, which have spent S$3.52 billion in the year 2016. We also hope to attract over the six thousand merchants in the various shopping districts of Singapore.

Now, what has all this, I mean, how can you benefit then?

A few things quickly, you can go cashless. Cashless has been, going cashless has been proven to encourage spending of consumers. As we encourage people to spend more, we can help merchants to get more revenues. It can also provide many conveniences especially each one of us here in the future, hopefully in the near future to not need to bring wallets around Singapore. And most importantly with the millions of tourists in Singapore, most of them already well trained Alipay users.

We believe our partnership with Alipay will bring a lot of value to our merchants. And finally we have six thousand merchants in Singapore’s main shopping districts, CC is just getting started.

Now coming to the end of my presentation, we're going to the promotions. The above data on the slides are some promotions that we will be doing for Alipay – installations and for CC Mall on-boarding. Essentially in one word or in one phrase, free installation and enabling for Alipay services, free on-boarding for CC Mall. I said, for some basic setup cost that is essentially free. We hope to help as many merchants as possible to expand the clientele, to make it a win-win situation, long term, for all stakeholders.

To end, we have emphasising for years about the importance of Singapore becoming a smart nation, about going cashless, about digitalising our businesses and organisations. CC is very excited to be part of this effort to digitalise our nation's organisations, to boost receipts, to boost expenditure for our local malls with the help of various service providers especially such as Alipay; With the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of merchants, we are confident that we as a nation can slowly but surely climb up to this one thing.

A very big thank you to all of you! Thank you!


Categories: Financial Institutions, Financial Technology, Technology & Operations
Keywords: Cashless Payments
Institutions: Alipay, CC Financial Services
People : Melvin Ooi, Jed Huang
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