BOCHK to bank Alipay+ settlement and link accounts to AlipayHK

Bank of China (Hong Kong) will provide the accounts and settlement banking behind Ant International's Alipay+ across Southeast Asia. BOCHK customers can also now link cards and accounts to AlipayHK. What changed BOCHK and Ant International have signed a strategic partnership covering cross-border payment connectivity, treasury and SME services. The concrete rail change is twofold. First, BOCHK will supply the account and settlement banking that sits behind Alipay+, the acceptance network Ant International uses to connect merchant acquirers to partner wallets, for flows across Southeast Asia; Alipay+ links more than 50 mobile payment partners and over 2 billion user accounts. Second, on the consumer side, BOCHK customers can link their bank accounts and credit cards to AlipayHK for peer-to-peer transfers, in-app payments and wallet top-ups. The two organisations describe further work on AI-assisted real-time treasury and liquidity management for corporate clients. The parties have worked together since 2013; this agreement formalises and widens that arrangement rather than starting a new one.