TransferWise partners with Alipay for international money transfers

TransferWise, an international money transfer service, has partnered with China’s Alipay for international money transfer. TransferWise is a London-based Transfer payment system founded in 2011. It is valued to be around $3.5billion and supports money transfer between 66 countries. It has 6 million customers all over the globe.

Alipay is one of the major payment systems in China, having 1.2billion users. TransferWise promises instant money transfers, under 20 seconds. TransferWise users just need the recipient’s name and Alipay ID to initiate a money transfer. The money will then be transferred to the bank linked with the recipient's Alipay Profile.

China is one of the top remittance recipient countries in the world, with £54bn expected to be sent back home by Chinese ex-pats and migrants living abroad.

“The partnership is a major expansion for TransferWise as it reaches a new, additional market of people managing their money via the Alipay platform,” says the company.

Alipay is the second meaningful partnership for TransferWise in the recent past. In November 2019, it collaborated with GoCardless, the London fintech company that lets customers pay via recurring bank payments (known as Direct Debits in the U.K.). GoCardless is used by more than 50,000 businesses worldwide, spanning multinational corporations to small and medium businesses.