Alipay, China’s biggest third-party online payment platform, has been recently making several deals to expand its reach into new markets outside China. Thanks to the latest arrangement, The Body Shop will start accepting payments made through Alipay’s mobile wallet in 3 of its brick and mortar stores in London.
The Alipay-equipped POS launched on October 1st, in conjunction with the start of the golden week holidays in China, celebrating the birth of the PROC. Over 250.000 Chinese visited UK in 2015, and the numbers is set to increase in 2016 thanks to the exceptionally weak Pound, which just hit a 31-year low.
Chinese shoppers have been more and more attracted to foreign products, with cosmetics being one of the most sought after categories. Beauty retailers, both in China and abroad, have been experimenting with different strategies to win over the Chinese consumers.
According to Simon Coble, The Body Shop UK general manager “the Body Shop is extremely popular with the global Chinese Shopper and accounts for a significant percentage of sales in our major UK stores.” Thanks to the Alipay mobile payment, customers can now pay at the Body Shop store with ease just by scanning the QR code provided by the Alipay-equipped POS.
Alipay is China’s biggest online payment system, used by almost 500 million Chinese shoppers.It recently overtook Mastercard in worldwide usage.
