Tag: payment solutions

Shanghai, China – Customer-centric innovations and features—this has been Alibaba’s focal point this year as they recently announced their plans for the annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.

As ‘11.11’ continues to grow by the year, Alibaba focused on launching new strategies in the midst of changing consumer behaviors. Strategies include promotion of Alipay’s digital lifestyle platform, ‘doubling’ of shopping windows that will aid in featuring more brands and merchants, consumer reach and promotions, and utilization of livestreaming technology to drive more engagement from customers, especially from Chinese consumers, which has been noted to create the largest international presence to date.

Alibaba’s Alipay digital lifestyle platform aims at connecting almost two million local service providers in China, including micro-merchants such as street stalls and small-scale grocery stores. On the other hand, the company recently launched its Taobao Deals’ “RMB1 Sales” campaign, which aims at encouraging consumers to purchase goods at huge discounts and free shipping. Lastly, in regards to the livestreaming strategies, Alibaba aims to launch a shopping festival concept in Southeast Asia-namely in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam markets.

Jiang Fan, president of Taobao and Tmall, expressed his hopes for the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, stating that through these innovations, the company hopes to adapt to the changes this year has brought to the consumer market.

“The pandemic has fundamentally changed consumer shopping preferences and accelerated digital transformation of many businesses. Through our expansion from ‘single’ to ‘double,’ 11.11 will be offering more opportunities for merchants both online and offline to engage with consumers as well as provide a better consumer experience overall,” Fan stated.

Philippines – CellPoint Digital, a leading provider of digital commerce and payment solutions to airlines and travel companies, has partnered with Cebu Pacific, one of the largest airlines in the Philippines to implement a cutting-edge Payment Orchestration Platform across all its digital channels.

CellPoint Digital’s payment orchestration platform, Velocity, will enable Cebu Pacific to simplify the payment experience of its repeat customers by deploying stored cards in all its digital channels with a single sign-on.

Velocity is a PSP and acquirer agnostic and will enable the airline to build and orchestrate a bespoke network of acquiring banks. The intelligent routing module will dynamically optimize the routing of each transaction via this network, thereby maximizing the acceptance rate and lowering transaction costs.

Cebu Pacific will also have the ability to fast track the launch of new payment methods in new markets, by picking and rapidly activating new ones from CellPoint’s growing payment ecosystem, including over 40 local and global cards and over 350 alternative payment methods.

Based on CellPoint’s experience, stored cards will generate a double-digit uplift on the conversion rate and a payment acceptance rate exceeding the airline industry average. Customer satisfaction and the conversion  is also expected to be boosted by pay-by-link messages that re-engage customers who leave at check-out. A multi-currency pricing feature offers international travelers the option to pay in their preferred currency.

“Our customers remain at the heart of our business – as such, we are constantly improving their customer journey with us. As we continue transforming processes towards a frictionless experience, implementing effective and secure online payment portals is critical. With this new development, we look forward to providing our passengers an omnichannel experience and the ease of one-click payments, along with localized options in all markets,” said Candice Iyog, vice-president for marketing and customer experience at Cebu Pacific.

Meanwhile, Kristian Gjerding, CEO of CellPoint Digital said, “We are delighted to partner with one of the most successful airlines in the Asia Pacific and support their impressive expansion and commitment to the best digital customer experience. Our independent payment platform will give Cebu the agility and control they need to optimize further their payment strategy and drastically simplify their customer payment experience,” Gjerding added.