GHL starts Alipay services in Philippines

KUALA LUMPUR: GHL Systems Bhd will offer Alipay payment acceptance services to in-stores merchants as well as online merchants in the Philippines.
The rollout will start with physical merchants this month and eventually extend to e-commerce merchants. Philippines marks the third Asean country after Malaysia and Thailand since GHL’s tie-up with Alipay to offer a next generation payment option to merchants.
GHL started merchant acquiring for Alipay in Thailand (Q2 2016) and Malaysia (Q2 2017) and to date, GHL Thailand has enabled over 900 merchant acceptance points. GHL Malaysia has enabled 5,400 acceptance points in hotel, retail chain stores, convenience stores and F&B space that has high Chinese tourist foot traffic.
Alipay is China’s leading mobile and online payment solution, owned by Ant Financial Services Group, a related company of the Alibaba Group.
For the first 10 months of 2017, 810,807 tourists from China visited the Philippines compared with the whole of 2016, which totaled 675,663 tourists. This is expected to increase further with the implementation of the Visa Upon Arrival program in the Philippines. This growth bodes well for Philippine businesses and merchants as Chinese tourists generally carry the Alipay mobile wallet.
GHL group CEO Danny Leong said: “We started with Alipay in 2016 in Thailand, Malaysia in April 2017 and now with the Philippines market, GHL looks to expanding further to the region as Alipay’s key Asean partner”.