Quest Payment Systems Brings Alipay To Australia

Quest Payment Systems, a payments provider in Australia, announced Wednesday (Dec. 7) it collaborated with Alipay, the mobile and online payment company, to launch Alipay in Australian stores.

In a press release, Quest Payment Systems said Alipay makes it easy for Chinese nationals, tourists and students to pay for purchases in-store using their mobile phones and in their own currency. Quest has designed the software to fully integrate with existing point-of-sale systems. According to Quest Payment Systems, recent growth for mobile payments in China has been substantial, pointing to Business Insider, which projected that China will process $6.3 trillion in total mobile payments by 2020. What’s more, Quest Payment Systems said Tourism Australia has reported that Chinese visitors spent a record $8.9 billion over the past year to March 2016. On average, Chinese tourists spend approximately $8,000 during each visit to Australia, providing significant opportunity for Australian retailers, Quest said.

“It is important to find a payments partner that can bring new innovation into our stores, whilst understanding the needs of a large retail chain. Quest added the Alipay solution without the need to change our POS software or for additional hardware,” said Mark Finocchiario, managing partner and director at My Chemist. “We’ve been able to maintain our existing payment and reconciliation processes, minimizing change for our operators and enabling us to offer this convenient feature to our Chinese shoppers.”

Quest noted in the press release that it has already enabled Alipay in select stores within The Chemist Warehouse and My Chemist pharmacy groups, with full rollout planned for early 2017. “We are delighted to provide the first large-scale rollout of Alipay into an Australian network. Alipay customers can now simply scan a code displayed on the screen of our QT720 payment terminal in order to pay from their mobile phone. It’s simple, intuitive and ensures that the customer can see exactly what their purchase will cost in both AUD and their local currency,” added Luke Fuller, innovation manager at Quest.