The growing affluence of the middle class and the increasing frequency of outbound travel by Chinese travellers

With the development of China's economy and foreign trade, as well as the increasing affluence of the middle class, the outbound travel of Chinese tourists is becoming more and more frequent. Data show that last year, the number of outbound tourists in China increased by 18.4% to more than 83 million people, more than the United States and Germany, the world's largest outbound tourism market.

China has not only become the world's fastest-growing source of tourism in the past decade, but Chinese tourists have already topped the world's travel costs. Chinese tourists last year recorded a record 102 billion trillion dollars in overseas spending, surpassing the US and Germany, which are close to $84 billion trillion, ranked first in the world.

In the face of the huge travel demand of Chinese consumers, more and more multinational airlines are trying to expand the mainland market, as China's largest third-party payment platform, Alipay has become the most ideal partner for these multinational companies.

Meanwhile, Alipay, which has more than 800 million registered users in China, is also seeking opportunities to expand overseas and to work with foreign travel reservation platforms to provide more convenient and secure payment methods for mainland Chinese consumers. Currently Alipay has been working with 180 financial institutions around the world to support 15 foreign currency transactions. Cooperation has been established with 180 financial institutions worldwide to support 15 foreign currency transactions.

The world's largest business travel payment system, the global Air Journey plan (Universal Air Travel Plans, abbreviated UATP) today announced a strategic partnership with Alipay, which allows Chinese consumers to book and pay their airfare more conveniently and safely abroad through Alipay.

Through this collaboration, overseas airlines, hotels and other travel service providers can connect China's more than 800 million Alipay users via the UATP network, based on the current terminal system with minimal cost. Alipay users are the highest enthusiasm for Chinese online shopping, but also the most enthusiastic about the purchase of foreign quality products and travel abroad consumer groups.

UATP is a business travel payment system set up by a number of airlines around the world, covering 105 countries and regions, and establishing cooperation with 250 airlines and thousands of travel agencies. Its airline members include United Airlines (UA), American Airlines (AA), Delta, and Lufthansa (LUFTHANSA), the world's largest airlines.

UATP and Alipay all have high hopes for this strategic cooperation. "We look forward to working with Alipay and continue to advance this mutually beneficial opportunity in the future," said UATP President and CEO Lalf Kei Ralph Kaiser. We expect further growth in China's future travel abroad. UATP Network and Alipay Strong cooperation, I believe that both sides can bring the best interests to serve this vibrant growth of the market.

Alipay International Vice President Li Jingming said that as China's largest third-party payment platform, Alipay is excited to join hands with UATP to achieve this landmark cooperation to help U.S. businesses to provide Chinese consumers with more satisfactory service.

He stressed, in particular, that Alipay wanted to work with more leading global airlines and travel agencies to help the growing number of Chinese tourists travel overseas to book and pay air tickets, hotels, car rentals and other business trips abroad more easily.

In fact, for Alipay, internationalization has become one of the most important strategic directions this year. Alibaba Group Chairman Ma Yun has repeatedly proposed Alipay must be globalized, "globalization is to pay treasure born on the goals."

Since 2007, Alipay has been working with the Bank of China to offer payment services for overseas purchases, and has also worked with Visa and MasterCard to facilitate foreign customers ' shopping in China. On the other hand, Alipay is also the preferred payment partner for overseas businesses planning to enter the Chinese market. At present, more than 300 foreign websites have entered the Chinese market through Alipay platform.

In fact, Alipay has surpassed ebay's PayPal as the largest Third-party payment platform in terms of trading volume. PayPal is still the strongest competitor in Alipay's overseas expansion process. But in the service of Chinese users to go out, Alipay also has the advantages of PayPal can not be compared.

In July this year, Alipay reached a partnership with the hotel reservation of Orbitz, the international travel reservation giant, and ended the history of HotelClub's support for overseas bank cards, such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Alipay users can use the renminbi through HotelClub, in more than 7,400 cities in 141 countries to book hotels, can be a convenient step to complete the payment.