Walgreens, in collaboration with Chinese digital payment platform Alipay, accepts digital wallet Alipay at thousands of Walgreens stores throughout the U.S. Alipay serves more than 1 billion users worldwide.
According to January 2019 data, Nielsen indicates more than two-thirds of Chinese tourists said they used their smartphones to pay while traveling abroad in 2018. Nielsen data also shows that nearly 60% of retailers who have adopted Alipay saw growth in foot traffic and revenue.
Currently, Alipay is available at 3,000 Walgreens stores taking the count of important cities where users of Alipay travel the most, including New York City, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. By April 2019, Alipay’s availability is set to expand to more than 7,000 Walgreens locations across the U.S.
Walgreens will be the largest U.S. drugstore chain to deploy Alipay.
Alipay is delighted to collaborate with a company that has been trustworthy across America since 1901 and is constantly evolving to provide more Chinese consumers with a seamless and familiar way to pay – Yulei Wang, General manager, Alipay North America
Last September, Walgreens made its first move into the Chinese consumer market by launching a flagship store on Alibaba’s cross-border eCommerce site, Tmall Global. Walgreens currently operates more than 9,500 drugstores in the US.
By April, over 7,000 Walgreens stores are expected to have Alipay installed as a payment method, helping to raise the profile of the operator in the US. The American drugstore chain operates almost 10,000 stores throughout the US.
