KUALA LUMPUR: Starting this month, GHL Systems Bhd will begin offering Alipay payment acceptance services to Malaysian in-store merchants, as well as online ones.

The service will start with physical merchants before end-April, and then e-commerce merchants, GHL said in a statement yesterday.

Alipay is one of the largest mobile and online payment platforms globally with over 400 million users. It is owned by Ant Financial Services, which is part of Alibaba Group.

This partnership marks the second Asean country where GHL has tied-up with Alipay to offer an alternative payment option to merchants.

It had also partnered with Alipay in the second quarter of 2016 to offer the alternative payment option for physical stores in Thailand.

To date, GHL Thailand has enabled over 600 merchant acceptance points with notable chain stores in the hotel, retail and food and beverage space which has high Chinese tourist foot traffic, it said.

GHL Thailand has now extended the Alipay payment offering to e-commerce merchants under eGHL, the group’s online payment gateway, said GHL.

GHL’s group chief executive officer Danny Leong said, “We started with Alipay in 2016 in Thailand. This has allowed both sides to familiarise operational methodology and ironed out initial teething issues. This will allow our Alipay Malaysian roll-out to proceed more smoothly and we look forward to expanding to the region as Alipay’s Asean partner.”