Mobile Payments Leader Alipay China’s “Most Relevant Brand”

We’ve heard a lot about Alipay’s almost frantic expansion both inside and outside China over the last several months, and it’s a strategy that seems to be paying dividends for Ant Financial. A new report from the China 2018 Prophet Brand Relevance Index (BRI) study notes that Alipay is the most relevant brand in China. That alone would be something of a feat, but Alipay has held that title for three years running now.

Prophet offered up some more specific commentary as well, noting that Alipay was the most relevant brand on several fronts. It was most relevant with males, with females, with millennials, and even with non-millennials, meaning that it pretty much covered the waterfront.

The Prophet report noted that Alipay’s wide range of uses-including insurance, tax refund services, shopping loans and more-as well as its comparative ease of use contributed in large part to its steady growth.

Interestingly, this follows recent news from KPMG, which noted that Ant Financial itself was among the top 50 Chinese brands overall. KPMG’s study covered eight major worldwide markets and used a wide range of consumers therein, including different income levels, ages and more such factors.

So here, we see from two different sources that Alipay, and Ant Financial by extension, are well-known properties worldwide. This is in keeping with Alipay’s expansion efforts; it’s showing up in so many places that it would be almost impossible to not have heard of Alipay by now. Granted, a lot of non-Chinese might not have heard of it-they can’t very well use it, so why would they have paid much attention to it?-but with retailers worldwide bringing it in, it’s entirely possible that store owners if nothing else have heard of it.

Alipay’s rapid expansion in use cases and user bases alike have given it a lot of extra name recognition all over the world. We’ve got two separate studies that say as much, and a whole lot of anecdotal evidence of new product releases to back that up nicely. Alipay’s expansion efforts likely won’t stop here, so look for Alipay and Ant Financial to make a few more list appearances before it’s all said and done.