Alipay Partners with Walgreens to Enable Mobile Payments Across 7,000 U.S. Stores

VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) has learned that on the 13th local time, Ant Financial and Walgreens Boots Alliance, a U.S. retail pharmacy group, announced a partnership in New York, enabling customers to make payments via Alipay at Walgreens-owned pharmacies.

Alipay is a leading global digital payment provider, serving 1 billion users worldwide in partnership with its global partners. According to the Nielsen report released in January, “more than two-thirds of Chinese tourists stated that they used smartphones to make payments abroad in 2018. After accepting Alipay, nearly 60% of the surveyed merchants reported increases in both foot traffic and revenue.”

Alipay is currently accepted at 3,000 Walgreens pharmacies, including in cities with the highest number of Chinese tourists, such as New York City, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. By April, Alipay’s availability will expand to more than 7,000 Walgreens stores nationwide.

Walgreens Boots Alliance is the parent company of Walgreens, formed in 2014 through the merger of U.S. pharmacy retail giant Walgreens and UK-based pharmaceutical distributor Boots Alliance. Following the merger, it became the world’s largest publicly traded company primarily engaged in pharmaceutical retail and distribution, with a market capitalization of nearly $70 billion.

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) currently operates in 25 countries and regions worldwide, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. It owns 18,500 pharmacies, including nearly 10,000 in the United States, over 2,000 in the United Kingdom, and more than 1,000 in Mexico. The company also operates over 390 pharmaceutical distribution centers and employs 415,000 people. In 2017, its revenue reached $131.54 billion. Walgreens Boots Alliance is also a shareholder of AmerisourceBergen, the largest pharmaceutical distributor in the United States, and Guoda Drugstore, the largest pharmacy chain in China.

In recent years, Walgreens Boots Alliance has actively embraced the internet. Previously, in January 2019, it announced a partnership with Microsoft. The collaboration includes: Walgreens Boots Alliance migrating its IT systems to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and providing all employees with access to the Microsoft Office suite; Microsoft and Walgreens Boots Alliance jointly seeking new pharmaceutical industry partners to build a healthcare service network; and co-developing chronic disease management solutions, supported by Microsoft’s cloud services and AI technologies. In addition, Walgreens Boots Alliance will launch “Digital Health Corners” in 12 pharmacies to sell digital health hardware.

Alibaba Group and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) have previously collaborated. Last September, WBA announced that it would open a flagship store on Alibaba’s Tmall Global platform to market Boots beauty products to Chinese consumers. The two companies stated that Chinese consumers would be able to purchase popular British and American brands on the Tmall Global platform, noting that the launch of the new flagship store reflects Chinese consumers’ growing familiarity with and preference for high-quality international beauty brands.

From the current perspective, the collaboration between Alibaba and Walgreens Boots Alliance is comprehensive, not only facilitating the “introduction” of high-quality overseas products into China but also helping Chinese tourists “going global” to better enjoy local services.

In addition, Alipay has partnered with numerous pharmacies in China, including Henan Zhang Zhongjing, Yunnan Yixintang, and Guangdong Jianke, to create “smart pharmacies.” It remains to be seen whether this online-offline integrated, data-driven smart pharmacy model will expand overseas in the future.