Shopping with their smartphones will be increasingly possible, for more than 3 million Chinese tourists arriving each year in our country, thanks to the agreement signed between Gestpay, the Italian solution for online payment of Sella Group, and Alipay, the payment platform of Ant Financial, an affiliate company of Alibaba Group.

Made in Italy and Italy as a destination are increasingly attractive to the Chinese market, as demonstrated by recent studies realized by Nielsen for Alipay, that highlight how the budget allocated by Chinese tourists for a holiday in Europe is more than 3700 dollars, an amount often spent in luxury shops, restaurants and on Italian craftsmanship. What better way to pay than the Alipay app, installed on 99% of tourists' smartphones and used by 63% of Chinese tourists in stores accepting this payment instrument.

Thanks to the agreement between Gestpay and Alipay, this will be easier. Users of the Alipay wallet, in fact, will be able to buy in physical and online enabled stores throughout Italy; they will also be able to make online purchases from China and around the world on e-commerce sites that use Gestpay, one of the most popular acceptance and management payment platforms in Italy by number of customers and transactions, and already used in more than 20 countries.

The platform created by Sella group's payments specialists team, in collaboration with Vipera (*), a  company in which Sella Group invested in 2017, will allow the installation, on the main POSs already available in stores, of an application that develops a QR Code on the screen or upon the receipt. By framing the QR Code with the Alipay wallet, customers can pay via mobile.

Moreover, in line with the strategic objective of Open Banking platforms, Sella is making available an API infrastructure that allows to the same payment instrument to be enabled also on sales terminals as well as the POS, which will thus incorporate this innovative payment tool into their applications.

Thanks to this operation, Gestpay and Alipay are increasingly supporting merchants to attract the Chinese consumer market, boosting services for those who work with international customers, in particular with ones coming from Asian countries, which are increasingly aware of Made in Italy products.