Ant International, Standard Chartered Bank and the Swift system said on Wednesday they were collaborating on a global cross-border remittance service that allowed direct transfers from overseas banks to users’ home wallet apps, backed by Alipay+.
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The programme’s live trials are limited to Standard Chartered Bank accounts and allow participants to send cash to 36 digital wallets around the world operated by Alipay+, a cross-border payment product run by Ant International. Most of its customers are based in Southeast and East Asia.
“The first transactions were completed between a Standard Chartered Bank customer account and a partner e-wallet,” according to statements released on Wednesday by Standard Chartered and Singapore-based Ant International, which was spun off from fintech company Ant Group last year. Ant is an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the Post.
The statements did not say when the service would be publicly launched. But Ant said it “will work with more banks and wallet partners”, outside Singapore, and expand the number of use cases by the end of the year.
Ant International said Hong Kong’s Filipino domestic workers stood to benefit from the programme. As trials progress, remittance services to e-wallets like GCash, a widely used platform in the Philippines, are expected to be rolled out soon.
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The trial uses the infrastructure of Swift, a global messaging network used by institutions to facilitate global money transfers with a network of more than 11,500 financial institutions connecting to 1.7 billion user accounts.