Chinese travelers can now use Alipay at Starbucks in South Korea

When ordering a cup of coffee in South Korea, Chinese caffeine fiends need no longer worry about trifling things like cash, cards, or currency exchange. Instead, travelers from the Chinese mainland are now free to pay for their Starbucks latte in renminbi, on their phone, through the magic of Alipay.

Thanks to yet another new partnership between the world’s largest mobile payment platform and its biggest coffee shop chain, Alipay has now become available at 1,150 Starbucks branches across Korea, quite the convenience for Chinese tourists visiting the country looking for a taste of home.

“Starbucks branches are among the most visited places by Chinese travelers in Korea,” said Danny Chung, General Manager of Alipay Korea. “We will continue to introduce Alipay to more local merchants, including restaurants and shops to make Chinese travelers’ journey as convenient as at home.”

Indeed, those Chinese traveling to Pyeongchang for this year’s Winter Olympics will already be pleasantly surprised to find their lives made easier by some 400 merchants around the area who accept Alipay, including convenience stores, local restaurants, and retail outlets.

Already, Alipay is available virtually everywhere in China — including at all 2,800 Starbucks locations across the country  - but the company is also increasingly becoming focused with expanding abroad as well.

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The payment platform is currently following the trails set by the tens of millions of Chinese tourists who head overseas each year, hoping to help businesses connect with these travelers from the mainland who are used to the convenience of mobile payment.

This includes the country of Finland. Recently, a group of eight Chinese tourists were taken on a 6-day trip to the Nordic country, where they were able to use Alipay for everything from shopping and dining to taxi rides and even duty refunds at the airport.

As one of Chinese tourists’ favorite places to travel, Korea first began to embrace Alipay in 2015 with department stores, duty free shops, and retail brands all accepting the mobile payment system as a way of enticing more big-spending customers from the mainland  - a strategy we are likely to see pop up more and more across the globe in the years to come.

Presumably, it won’t be long before Chinese tourists will be able to pay for their coffee with their phone anywhere that they travel.