JPMorgan Now Powering US Credit Cards on China’s Alibaba.com

J.P. Morgan is now powering U.S. credit card processing for Alibaba.com, the business to business (B2B) division of Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group based in China, according to a press release emailed to PYMNTS.

J.P. Morgan Merchant Services — the top U.S. payments processing provider, according to the Nilson Report — is working with Ant Group’s Alipay, the Chinese third-party mobile and online payment platform.

Takis Georgakopoulos, global head of wholesale payments for J.P. Morgan, said the bank is the only global financial institution capable of managing the “payments lifecycle for marketplaces” — from the time of purchase through “ensuring that the funds reach the seller’s bank accounts.”

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As Alibaba.com continues to grow in the U.S., Georgakopoulos added that J.P. Morgan will offer an “ease of doing business across buyers and sellers.”

Among the biggest eCommerce trends is the surge in digital marketplaces, which comprised close to 50% of all eCommerce purchases last year and reached in excess of $4.2 trillion in sales, according to data from Statista. The escalation of online shopping made it important for small and micro-businesses to find a seamless way to accept customers’ numerous payments methods from a variety of channels.

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With J.P. Morgan’s payments processing expertise, Alipay can offer its customers better card payment services in the U.S. for Alibaba.com’s Trade Assurance, which is the free built-in protection service that covers orders placed on and paid for through the Alibaba website.

Alibaba.com has more than 26 million active buyers annually who shop from 200,000 global sellers. Some 30% of transactions on the platform come from shoppers based in the U.S. Transactions involving U.S. businesses accelerated 150% year over year from 2020 to 2021, the company said.

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Douglas Feagin, senior vice president, global strategic partnerships and investments at Ant Group, said that teaming up with J.P. Morgan for digital payments will “help empower small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. to pivot to digital and go global.”

Feagin added that Ant Group is always on the lookout to form “strategic relationships with international partners” as a means of connecting merchants to suppliers worldwide and to “enable all parties to use their preferred method of payment.”