TerraPay connects Xend wallets to Alipay+ for in-store QR payments
A network link lets digital wallet users in Africa and other regions pay at Alipay+ merchants by scanning QR codes with their domestic apps.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
TerraPay has linked Xend, its wallet interoperability network, to Alipay+, the unified wallet gateway built by Ant International. The connection enables in-store cross-border QR payments for users of digital wallets in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
The mechanics should feel familiar to anyone who pays by QR code at home. A customer opens their domestic wallet app, scans a code at a merchant checkout, and confirms the payment. In this case the merchant is abroad and the transaction reaches it through Alipay+. No new app has to be installed, and no foreign currency has to be arranged before the trip.
TerraPay built Xend to connect mobile wallets to each other, and its existing business has been account-to-account transfers. Adding Alipay+ gives that network a second outlet: global in-store merchant acceptance. The same wallet account that moves money to another person can now be used to pay a shop in another country.
Alipay+ supplies the scale. It links more than 50 international payment partners to merchants in 220 destination markets and is integrated with more than 10 national payment rails. Its merchant base reaches more than 150 million businesses globally. The first rollout puts 15 digital wallets in Africa on the Xend network into that merchant environment.
For wallet operators, the route into this footprint is a single API integration. That connection adds international spending capabilities without building separate links to each market. For consumers, the benefit is that their usual payment app does not stop working at the border. “A home wallet from Kenya, Colombia or any other country should work abroad as easily as it does at home,” said Ambar Sur, founder and CEO of TerraPay.
A home wallet from Kenya, Colombia or any other country should work abroad as easily as it does at home,
Edward Yue, general manager of the Alipay+ Global Power Center at Ant International, said bringing TerraPay’s wallet network to Alipay+ helps people and businesses connect across borders. The two executives are describing the same shift from different sides: wallets want merchants, and merchants want wallets.
The structure matters because this is not a bilateral deal between one bank and one payment network. Xend is a network of wallet operators, and Alipay+ is a gateway that aggregates payment partners. Connecting them lets a wallet firm keep its local product unchanged and still offer an international spend feature. Alipay+ expands the set of wallets it can present to its existing merchants, while TerraPay gains an acceptance footprint it did not have to build.
The 15 African wallets in the first phase will show whether that arrangement works at scale. The integration is designed so the same route can handle more wallets later, and that is ultimately the point: interoperability is what turns a domestic wallet into a travel payments product.
