China's Alipay cooperates with Thai commercial bank

BANGKOK - China's Alipay and Thailand's Kasikorn Bank said on Saturday at Bangkok tourist hotspot Jatujak Market that they will enhance their cooperation in promoting QR code payment in Thailand.

The Thai Bank has already developed a mobile app which supports QR code payment for the Thai market. Chinese tourists can use Alipay app to scan the QR code generated by the Kasikorn app to complete the buying with Thai sellers.

"Chinese accounts for the majority of my customers and we just began to use the Kasikorn app a few days ago and we hope it will make buying more convenient for the Chinese customers," said Piyanas, a woman selling clothes at the Jatujak Market.

Viu, owner of a shop selling colorful notebooks, told Xinhua that she began to use the app this morning and one Chinese tourist had paid her by Alipay soon after.

During a press conference held inside the market, Pipavin Sodprasert, Thailand country manager for Ant Financial, which operates Alipay, told Xinhua that there are some 20,000 Thai businesses using their service and they aim to provide the convenience of QR Code payment, enjoyed by many Chinese now, to Thais, which is consistent with Thai government's target of cashless society.

"I have been to China for many times and we hope Chinese tourists can encourage our society to use e-payment," said Patchara Samalapa, senior executive vice president of Kasikorn Bank, adding that Thai customers can also use their app to scan and to pay.

The bank said their app is the first one that supports QR Code payment in Thailand and they aim to cover some 200,000 shops around the kingdom by the end of this year.