Watch out Apple Pay, here comes Alipay

Chinese mobile payments giant, Alipay, has announced a deal with payments processor First Data, meaning that more than four million US merchants will accept payment via the service. That marks it out as a genuine threat to Apple Pay, which is at 4.5 million. The company behind Alipay, Ant Financial (part of Alibaba), is targeting the growing number of Chinese tourists and students in the US.

Alipay’s main competitor in China is also venturing down this route. Tencent’s WeChat Pay is integrated into WeChat, which had nearly 900 million users at the end of last year.