Making the vital difference in everyday life

Alipay and WeChat Pay combined accounted for around 94 percent of the nation's 47.7 trillion yuan third-party mobile payment market in the first quarter of 2019, according to consultancy Analysys.

Digital payment firms keep rolling out new features to facilitate the process. For instance, Alipay launched the "Smile to Pay" service, allowing users to scan their faces in lieu of passwords to conduct the payment.

The first commercial trial using facial recognition for payment globally took place in Hangzhou, where Alipay teamed up with a KFC canteen featuring healthy-eating. To make the function more accessible to merchants and customers, the company also invented a plug-and-play device that is adaptable to a wide array of terminals and does not require merchants to overhaul their existing enterprise resource planning system.

Aside from breakthroughs at home, mobile payment is making strides abroad to satiate the surging needs for outbound travelers. From buying luxury bags to paying Uber bills, from convenience stores to theme parks, China's top wireless payment providers, like Alipay, WeChat Pay and Union Pay's Quick Pass, are tapping into the international market in the footsteps of globe-trotting and big-spending Chinese visitors.

Instead of creating an equivalent app overseas, they have largely focused on signing overseas merchants who would implement their payment systems.

Tencent's WeChat Pay is accepted in 49 economies around the world. It is soliciting a number of local smart solutions and service providers, or SSPs, to help its payment method deepen presence outside China, according to the company's overseas business director Fan Wei.

"The idea is to make the WeChat app's payment function run as smoothly in a foreign market as it does at home, by incorporating more app programming interfaces and payment-to-marketing tools developed by third-party providers," Fan said.

Early adopters of a comprehensive WeChat solution included Japan's Fuji-Q Highland amusement park. Since July last year, the park has introduced a mini program that offers introductions to facilities in Mandarin Chinese, provides special entrance offers and supports renminbi-denominated mobile payments.

While WeChat's focus remained on serving the Chinese population, Alipay is eyeing bigger undertakings. Since 2015, Alipay has formed nine strategic partnerships with local partners outside the Chinese mainland. This trend of fostering ecosystem development with local partners across Asia is likely to continue, according to a report by data and analysis company CB Insights.

Alipay's approach, apart from serving their own people, is to extend its own technologies and experience to incubate local payment solutions and allow for settlement using local currencies, which are mostly reflective in India's Paytm app and the Alipay HK app.

Alipay's parent Ant Financial, which is under the overarching Alibaba umbrella, has entered into a string of agreements in Bangladesh and Pakistan, pledging to help destination countries with technological upgrades to serve unbanked and underbanked populations.

For instance, the company signed a deal in January with Pakistan's Telenor Microfinance Bank to power the nation's first cross-border remittance service using blockchain technology.

"The new remittance service is one of the examples of how emerging technologies can help countries meet their digital and financial inclusion goals," said Eric Jing, chairman and CEO of Ant Financial.

Alipay is in a position to provide the financial infrastructure critical to Chinese small-and medium-sized enterprises as they expand overseas, said Li from iResearch.

"Ant needs to be present in markets where its corporate clients go. Economies related to the Belt and Road Initiative are no doubt among the biggest draw."