Alipay, the world's most-used electronic payment application has reached an agreement with a strong partner, a pact that is poised to challenge the dominant position of the Swiss payment solution – Twint.

The Swiss stock exchange operator and payment services company, has found a big partner: SIX Payment Services and Alipay have reached an agreement for the acceptance of POS and E-Commerce payments across Europe, SIX said in a statement today.

Under the terms of the agreement, Alipay’s payment service will be integrated into the payment application of SIX to enable merchant clients of SIX to accept Alipay payments from Alipay users. Alipay is a product of the Ant Financial Services Group, which is based in China and has already signed up 450 million users for its solution.

Ant Financial is the financial unit of Alibaba online retailer co-founded by billionaire Jack Ma – the equivalent of Amazon for China. Alipay has handled transactions totaling 860 billion francs for its customers – three times the volume of Paypal.

Chinese Tourists

Analysts had expected Alipay to launch the service in Switzerland next year. Reaching an agreement with SIX, the Chinese company has found a dominant local partner for the service launch, with already installed terminals at countless retail outlets.

Alipay mainly wants to serve its own customers in Europe, the Chinese citizens, who are visiting the continent in ever larger numbers. Chinese tourists spent about $292 billion in Europe last year and tourism experts expect the trend to continue.

Switzerland is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese tourists, along with Italy and France.

Global Brand

Agreeing to cooperate with SIX, Alipay gets access to some 110,000 retailers in Switzerland and across Europe for its customers.

«As our preferred partner, SIX takes us one step further in becoming a truly globally accepted payment system,» said Rita Liu, head of Alipay Europe, according to the statement.

For SIX, the agreement marks another step toward establishing its services in the retail industry: «It is our strategy to be able to process all kinds of payments and Alipay as a strongly growing payment tool must be part of our portfolio,» said Juerg Weber, CEO of SIX Payment Services.

Twint, Apple Pay, Alipay

The Swiss front against foreign payment applications today was dealt a blow. The banking industry earlier this year had agreed to support the Twint payment app in a bid to keep out Apple Pay.

But compared with Apple Pay, Alipay is a giant. And the Chinese solution is much more than a mere digital wallet. It also serves as social media and entertainment platform – maybe for Swiss customers too?