Alipay+ expands to Nepal thru Nepal Clearing House partnership

Ten mobile wallets and bank apps can now pay using NEPALPAY QR.

Ant International has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Nepal Clearing House Limited (NCHL) to allow payment partners of Alipay+ to pay in Nepal.

Under the MOU, 10 mobile wallets and banking apps within the Alipay+ network will be able to use cashless payments when they travel to Nepal. The users need only to scan the NEPALPAY QR or other interoperable QRs.

NEPALPAY QR has been implemented by NCHL as per the NepalQR standards published by Nepal Rastra Bank and as part of the National Payment Switch. 

This comes as more tourists flock to Nepal. A total of 416,069 tourists visited Nepal from January to April 2024, averaging over 100,000 arrivals per month, according to data from the Nepal Tourism Board.

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“Digitizing payments in Nepal and connecting its retail payment systems globally has been one of the key focus for NCHL. This partnership between NCHL and Alipay+ for enabling merchant payments is expected to be a major milestone to ease the cross-border transactions,” said Neelesh Man Singh Pradhan, CEO, NCHL.

Alipay+ now connects over 88 million merchants in 57 countries and regions to 1.5 billion consumer accounts across over 25 e-wallets and bank apps, allowing consumers to travel and pay hassle-free globally, and merchants to expand cross-border consumer engagement and digital marketing.