Alipay, the mobile wallet from Ant Financial Services Group, and payments company Worldline announced an expanded partnership that will enable visitors from Alipay's partner countries to use their mobile payment apps at merchants across Europe. 

Worldline will allow millions of European merchants to accept mobile wallets from Alipay's 1.2 billion users, when including its Asian partnerships to its core mobile wallet users. 

Alipay, the China-based mobile wallet app, has e-wallet partnerships in the Republic of Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. 

"Our vision is to create maximum simplicity for both merchants and their customers in order to provide a smooth payment journey," Roger Niederer, chief market officer, merchant services at Worldline, said in a company release. "By expanding our partnership with Alipay, we unlock the potential of a new generation of Asian tourists for our merchants across Europe and service the global economy in a most efficient way."

Alipay and Worldline originally entered a partnership in 2016, an agreement that allowed Alilpay to be accepted by European merchants in about 20 countries. Worldline, which has more than 400,000 merchant clients across Europe, allows them to accept payment through the Alipay mobile wallet without any additional steps during checkout at retailers, restaurants, hotels and transit companies.

European countries continued to be among the top destinations for Chinese tourists during that country's Golden Week holiday in October, according to Karl Wehner, general manager of Germany, Switzerland and Austria at Alibaba Group, which is an affiliate of Alipay. 

"For us this is a clear sign of the enormous potential for European merchants to connect to even more European merchants to connect to even more Asian tourists, and we aim to serve them with our innovative technology through our extended cooperation with our trusted partner Worldline," he said.

Cover image: Worldline.