Jack Ma co-founded Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA Fintech partner ant group found a way to expand its QR code-enabled payment solution abroad.

Ant has quietly formed partnerships with local payment providers in Asia.

Ant built something similar to that Mastercard Inc MA or visa inc v Digital payments network. It allows consumers to travel from home with their mobile wallet, TechCrunch reports.

Also read: Jack Ma’s Ant Digital Bank is expanding in Singapore by sweetening its lending offering

Ant calls the payment processing network Alipay+ to differentiate it from Alipay, its consumer-facing wallet that has become ubiquitous in China.

Alipay+ has integrated 15 payment methods, enabling its partner merchants to reach more than a billion consumers, said Angel Zhao, president of international business at Ant Group, during the Singapore Fintech Festival.

In order to achieve a network effect, Alipay+ has been busy engaging merchants. It supports over 2.5 million businesses around the world.

For example, Filipino tourists visiting Japan can pull up their GCash wallet and pay at a store that supports Alipay+ by scanning a QR code; They can also view their wallet’s QR code for the cashier to scan.

Likewise, a traveler from South Korea can pay in-store with Kakao Pay, as can a Malaysian tourist with Touch’n Go.

Meanwhile, Alipay+ automatically calculated and performed the currency conversion part.

Alipay+ charges business software fees as a provider of cross-border payment and merchant marketing solutions.

On the GCash landing page, users will find an entry to a list of merchant offers if they pay with Alipay+.

The appeal of Alipay+ for merchants, on the other hand, lies in the fact that a billion consumers can pay conveniently in their stores.

Interestingly, at the event, Zhao emphasized that Alipay+ served as an infrastructure layer for other consumer-facing wallets.

Although Ant has been studying overseas growth for years, the task…