Dubai Duty Free has announced its partnership with Alipay+ in order to leverage its tools for optimising the shopping experience of international visitors. Following this announcement, clients and consumers from South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia, and Italy, as well as the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Macao will be enabled to shop for the desired products while using their home payment applications at duty-free stores from Dubai and AI Maktoum.

In addition, users will benefit from an optimised travel and checkout experience by being enabled to access promotions as well. Through this collaboration, Alipay+ e-wallet and bank partners that are currently accepted across the UAE include: Alipay, AlipayHK, MPay (Macao SAR, China), GCash from the Philippines, Kakao Pay, Naver Pay and Toss Pay from South Korea, OCBC from Singapore, TrueMoney from Thailand, Hipay from Mongolia, as well as Tinaba from Italy. The vast majority of international customers will be enabled to pay for their taxi fares and to make cashless payments at big malls and airports with their home e-wallets, as well as banking apps in home currencies.

After scanning the QR code at the merchants’ end or pulling out their individual QR code, the transaction is expected to take place in seconds and its details to be shown in clients’ home digital applications in real-time. Alipay+’s recent strategy of development Alipay+ had multiple collaborations and product launches in the last couple of months, covering several different geographic areas around the world. In November 2023, cross-border digital payment provider Alipay+ announced its collaboration with Yapily in order to develop Open Banking payment services for clients in the region of Europe.

Following this strategic deal, the firms were expected to focus on the application of Open Banking on various mobile payment platforms, as well as on optimising connectivity between customers and businesses around the world. Users who bank with European financial institutions were given the possibility to make cross-border payments to Alipay+ merchants around the world, directly from their bank accounts in an efficient, secure, and fast manner. According to the press release published at the time, the companies were set to continue to develop new tools in order to provide traders with more capabilities and options that increased transaction value.

This was expected to take place by engaging users through the purchase process while connecting them to promotions and other value-added products at the same time. Earlier in October 2023, Alipay+ announced its partnership with LankaPay in order to optimise the digital travel experience to and from Sri Lanka. The companies signed a MoU to improve inbound and outbound travel experiences for customers, through cross-border digital payments.

This was expected to allow clients of Alipay+'s payment partners to complete transactions at over 400,000 LankaQR merchants across the country. In addition, the collaboration allowed customers to leverage their LankaQR-enabled apps to scan and pay at Alipay+ traders around the world during overseas travels. .