Clarins, a French family-owned company and market leader in skin care and make-up based on natural ingredients, which already offered Alipay, has integrated Alipay+, adding more popular Asian e-wallets as its payment options to attract and better serve Asian consumers visiting its own stores in Las Rozas Village (Madrid) and La Roca (Barcelona).

With Alipay+, Asian consumers will be able to easily make payments with their smartphones using the QR code. They will as well be able to effortlessly access promotions via their local apps. The integration of the Alipay+ solution in the POS terminals (Banco Santander) of Clarins stores has been made possible thanks to PayXpert, Alipay+’s partner in Spain.

Clarins is one of the cosmetics brands most appreciated by discerning Asian consumers, which is also reflected in the sales of its products when oriental tourists visit Spain.

Alipay+ provides a unified QR code-based solution that enables merchants to accept various digital payment methods including some of the most popular e-wallet apps in Asia.

“Around 60% of the clients of the Clarins own boutiques (Las Rozas Village y La Roca Village) clients in Spain came from Asia before the pandemic. Now we are getting back to those levels and offering them to pay through Alipay+ that connects some of the most popular e-wallets in Asia, brings consumers security and ease, and we expect the integration to help increase of this audience in the coming months,” says Cristina Sánchez, Retail Manager for Clarins in Spain.

“Asian tourists who come to our boutiques are also attracted by the promotions they receive on their mobile phones, which we carry out in collaboration with Alipay+. In addition, offering payment options supported by Alipay+ helps to overcome the language barrier to a great extent, since, although we have staff who speak Chinese, not in other languages such as Korean, Malay, and etc. and on some occasions they don't have a high command of English to communicate in that language,” adds Cristina.

That is why it is important to offer Asian consumers a shopping experience adapted to their needs and, in this sense, offering them their usual payment method and associated promotions is a key point to attract them and increase sales. It should be taken into account that Asian consumer mostly use their smartphones to make payments through QR codes and also, they highly appreciate promotions they receive from their payment apps, that are present in their daily lives to access multiple services such as transportation and medical reservations.

This is why Clarins has implemented in its boutiques in La Roca Village and Las Rozas Village Alipay+, a set of global cross-border mobile payment and marketing solutions that includes major digital payment wallets used in Asia including Alipay (China) and Kakao Pay (South Korea).

Through simple integration, shoppers and merchants can access all digital payment methods supported by Alipay+, both existing and those to be added later.

“We are very pleased that Clarins trusts Alipay+ to continue improving the shopping experience for Asian consumers visiting its stores in Spain both in terms of simple and secure mobile payments, as well as for other advantages such as promotions and other perks. For all these reasons, we are sure that this collaboration will contribute to an increase in the audience and sales of Clarins stores in Spain”, explains Alba Ruiz, Business Development Director at Alipay+ for Southern Europe.

According to Raúl Sánchez, PayXpert's Regional Manager for Southern Europe, Alipay+ partner and in charge of the implementation at Clarins: “At PayXpert, we are interested in providing quality solutions to customers with international needs. Thanks to Alipay+, we can meet this point by adding a string of new Asian payment methods to our portfolio without dedicating resources to specific integrations. Alipay+ is a plus both in innovation and in improving the checkout process”.

PayXpert has been collaborating with Ant Group since 2019. It started implementing the Alipay targeted at the Chinese consumer, which was a boost for many merchants in attracting and converting sales from Chinese customers. In 2023, it began implementing Alipay+, which allows it to extend that experience to other Asian regions thanks to the e-wallets it integrates.