Alipay, Poynt Get Together In North American Push

October 24, 2017         By: Steven Anderson

It’s been a while since we last heard anything about Poynt, who actually built the world’s first smart terminal. It may have come out of nowhere, but it broke through in a very big way, as Alipay recently announced a partnership with Poynt to bring the Alipay system to all those Poynt terminals and make North America a lot friendlier place for Alipay.

With the new partnership, Alipay’s 520 million users and change will be able to use their Alipay credentials for payment at the Poynt devices in North America. That means a rapid, painless payment process on a familiar system even when said user is nowhere near anywhere familiar to them.

Since the Poynt Smart Terminal is capable of staging connectivity via a variety of means—from 3G to Wi-Fi to a wired Ethernet connection—it’s able to work in a variety of situations to provide a ready connection between the terminal, the user, and the user’s payment processor of choice. That allows it to bring in multiple payment options, giving Poynt Smart Terminal users access to plenty of choices. Better yet, that makes it easier for newcomers in the field, like Alipay, to more readily incorporate into current setups.

Alipay’s North American president Souheil Badran noted “Given all the capabilities built into Poynt’s hardware and software, and its agnostic approach to acquirers, we will be able to deliver a truly integrated payment solution for retailers, as well as the simple payment experience our users are accustomed to. We partnered with Poynt because we both share a commitment to enabling a modern commerce experience for merchants and customers alike.”

It’s one more step in a growing pattern of delivering options all over the world for the growing Chinese tourist class. Alipay has been especially aggressive in pursuing this class of user, and has been branching out worldwide in a bid to make sure that, wherever a Chinese person might go on vacation, Alipay is waiting to accept their payment for just about anything they could want to buy while out.

Alipay’s work on this front has been downright tireless, and with Poynt now in its corner, it’s about to really broaden the gap between itself and just about everyone else in the market.