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Alipay+, the unified wallet gateway operated by Ant International, is expanding its roster of bank partners as cross-border mobile payment volumes climb across Asia Pacific.
The gateway already connects more than 50 digital wallets and financial institutions, with partners spanning established retail banks through to digital-only entrants.
Hang Seng Bank is the latest institution to join, becoming the first banking partner for Alipay+ in Hong Kong.
Hang Seng Mobile App users can now pay by QR code scan in the Chinese Mainland and overseas, using the bank’s own app at more than 100 million merchants across over 55 countries and regions.
The pitch to banks is that a single integration opens access to a payment acceptance network they would otherwise have to build market by market.
“Through Alipay+, banks are able to quickly build new revenue streams, increase digital engagement and introduce new value-added services for users through cross-border payments,” Ant International stated in its announcement.
Chasing outbound payment growth
Demand for outbound cross-border payments originating in Asia Pacific is forecast to grow faster than the global average.
Consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-business outbound cross-border payment volume from the region could reach 3.7 trillion by 2032, close to double the 2024 figure.
That trajectory tracks alongside broader digital wallet adoption, and it is the opportunity banks are being asked to buy into.
The argument put by Ant International is that banks can capture some of that volume without asking customers to change behaviour, since the payment happens inside an app the customer already uses.
Alipay+ is accepted in more than 220 markets globally.
It also connects to over 10 national QR systems, including DuitNow in Malaysia, PromptPay in Thailand and HUMO in Uzbekistan.
Those links matter commercially. Without them, a bank wanting to offer overseas QR payments would need to negotiate individually with merchants or acquirers in each target market, a process that scales badly.
Banks already on the network
Institutions across several Asia Pacific markets have already connected their users to Alipay+.
Public Bank Berhad has connected in Malaysia. Bank of the Philippine Islands and Asia United Bank have joined in the Philippines.
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OCBC is connected in Singapore, while Kasikorn Bank and Siam Commercial Bank have signed on in Thailand. Vietcombank represents Vietnam on the list.
The spread suggests the gateway is being positioned less as a China-corridor product and more as a general-purpose outbound rail for the region.
Adding functions beyond payments
Bank partners can also extend their app functionality through the Alipay+ Super App Platform, which supports partner mini-programmes and plug-in solutions.
The platform allows banks to onboard services such as travel bookings and social features without building them in-house, giving customers additional reasons to open the app between transactions.
That engagement question is not incidental. Banking apps compete for screen time against wallets, super apps and merchant apps, and low-frequency use makes cross-selling harder.
Ant International points to research from McKinsey & Company indicating that improved customer experience delivers higher returns, faster growth and lower costs for banks.
The same research links stronger customer experience scores to higher total shareholder return relative to banks that score poorly on the measure.
The emphasis on retention comes as macroeconomic conditions remain uncertain across several of the markets involved.
FX forecasting and blockchain settlement
Alipay+ is one of several platform services Ant International sells into the banking sector.
The company also operates Falcon TST, an AI foreign exchange model that produces long-term FX forecasts with up to 93 per cent accuracy.
Citi and Barclays are among the banks already using the model, according to Ant International.
Separately, the company runs Whale, an AI-powered blockchain platform built to move cross-border liquidity on a near-instant, round-the-clock basis.
Standard Chartered and HSBC are working with Ant International to integrate that platform with their existing infrastructure.
Taken together, the three products point at different parts of the same problem: banks want cross-border capability without the cost of building and maintaining the underlying plumbing themselves.
What it means for banks
For the institutions signing up, the appeal is speed to market. Connecting to an existing acceptance network is faster than assembling one, and the revenue arrives without a corresponding build cost.
The trade-off is dependency. Banks that route outbound QR payments through a third-party gateway are ceding a layer of the customer transaction to an intermediary, and the economics of that arrangement have not been disclosed.
Ant International has not detailed the commercial terms offered to bank partners, nor how revenue from cross-border transactions is shared.
More information on the company is available at https://www.ant-intl.com/
Last Updated on July 25, 2026 by Nick Ross
