Alipay brand expands into Southeast Asia via Lazada
Lazada's payment platform HelloPay has been rebranded to Alipay across four Southeast Asian markets it operates in, including Singapore and Indonesia, but features will remain unchanged.
The announcement came a year after Alibaba purchased a controlling stake in Lazada as part of efforts to bolster its presence in the region and expand beyond its domestic Chinese market.
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HelloPay now had been rebranded as Alipay Singapore, Alipay Malaysia, Alipay Indonesia, and Alipay Philippines, and would continue to facilitate payment services in the four markets in which Lazada operated.
All features and services offered on HelloPay would remain unchanged and the rebranded platform would run separately from the Alipay app, according to Ant Financial, the Alibaba subsidiary responsible for Alipay. It added that there were more than 450 million active users on Alipay.
"There will be no impact to HelloPay's users and payment partners," Ant's senior vice president, Douglas Feagin, said in a statement.
The merger also would see Lazada's HelloPay team joining Ant's Singapore office, which would oversee the rebranded platform.
Ant last week also extended Alipay services to the Indonesian market via a partnership with local media group, Elang Mahkota Teknologi (Emtek). Both companies would set up a joint venture in Indonesia to develop a mobile payment service for BlackBerry's BBM messaging app, which was operated by an Emtek subsidiary and clocked a monthly active user base of 63 million in the country.
In a separate announcement Thursday, Lazada and its online supermarket Redmart introduced a paid membership programme targeted at digital consumers in Singapore. Called LiveUp, the scheme featured products and services from its partners--Netflix, Taobao Collection, Uber, and UberEats--offering rewards and promotions available to members. Membership would be offered free for the first 60 days, after which it would be available at a discounted fee of S$28.8, said Lazada.
The initiative was created to tap Singapore's growing affinity for online lifestyle services such as ride-sharing and food delivery, said Lazada Singapore CEO Alexis Lanternier.