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Feb. 15 (NBD) -- Ant Financial, Chinese payment company that operates Alipay, acquired London-headquartered counterpart WorldFirst in a deal valued at around 700 million U.S. dollars, news platform Jiemian.com reported.

Under the agreement, WorldFirst will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant Financial but will retain its brand and continue to be led by its co-founder and chief executive Jonathan Quin.

The UK-based company offers exchange and currency hedging services to businesses, banks, asset management companies and individuals around the world. Since its establishment in 2004, the company has been exchanged more than 60 billion pounds (78.7 billion U.S. dollars) for 160,000 customers.

"Alipay and WorldFirst's capabilities and international footprints are highly complementary," Jonathan Quin wrote in an internal memo obtained by TechCrunch.

The deal was deemed as the most important acquisition ever in the fin-tech sector in China and it will give Alipay a great international boost.

Alipay has started its global expansion over a decade ago and worked with more than 250 financial institutions worldwide, providing services for consumers in 54 countries and regions.

It is worth noting that Alipay has helped nine payment companies in the Belt and Road countries develop local version of Alipay, including India's Paytm, Parkistan's Easypaisa, Philipines' GCash and Bangladesh's bKash.

However, the competition is fierce as its biggest rival WeChat Pay, although a late comer, is also trying to catch up.

WeChat Pay started to promote its cross-border payment service in France from April 2017. Currently, department stores in Paris such as Les Galeries Lafayette Haussmann and Printemps, are able to receive payments through Wechat Pay.

In July 2017, Tencent announced that it applied for a license in Malaysia and launched a domestic mobile wallet product in the country called WeChat Pay MY later that year in the country.

November of last year, WeChat Pay teamed up with Japan's most popular communication platform Line to offer payment services for small retailers in Japan.

In 2018, the number of WeChat Pay's overseas transactions, transaction volumes and active merchants grew eight to nine times compared with that of 2017, becoming a formidable rival to Alipay overseas.

Different to Alipay, Tencent's payment function is more convenient for people at different ages to use as it is embedded in social communication app WeChat. 

Due to this advantage and large promotional activities,the number of Chinese people using Wechat Pay in outbound trips increased four to five times last year. But the problem is how to make better use of its social feature.

Li Peiku, vice president of WeChat Pay said to news platform wallstreetcn.com that WeChat builds a communication channel between consumers and retailers, making it a beginning of the next deal. But in most occasions, overseas consumption is a one-time deal. It is waste to have so many potential users but cannot turn them into real buyers.

WeChat was launched seven years later than Alipay, but currently users of WeChat Pay and Alipay are neck and neck. To catch up with Alipay, WeChat has to make full use of its social function.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn