Badran Exits As President of Alipay U.S. As Alipay Enjoys a Booming Summer Overseas

July and August are big vacation months in China, and this year Chinese travelers’ use of the Alipay mobile-payment service boomed as users ventured abroad, according to figures released Wednesday. 

In related news, China’s Ant Financial Services Group confirmed on Wednesday that Souheil Badran, who had headed up Alipay’s expansion in the U.S. market as president of Ant’s Alipay US Inc., has left the company for what a spokesperson characterized as “personal reasons.” Steve Wang, general manager for Alipay North America, has assumed Badran’s duties. Wang is a veteran executive of Internet-services company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which spun off Alipay in 2011 and plans to acquire a stake in Ant Financial pending regulatory approval. Badran’s actual date of departure was early August, according to the spokesperson. 

“We appreciate [Badran’s] contribution to connecting Chinese visitors and North American merchants with a seamless mobile payment experience. The Alipay U.S. team will continue its work to serve our customers,” the Ant spokesperson said. A former First Data Corp. executive, Badran joined Alipay in October 2016.

Alipay is spare in revealing specific numbers, but its latest report says its transactions outside of China increased by a factor of 2.6 in July and August compared to the same period in 2017. Asian countries and Australis accounted for the nine biggest overseas markets in terms of transactions, with the United States ranking 10^th, down a slot from 2017, Alipay says.

Alipay and its chief rival, WeChat Pay, a service of China’s hugely popular WeChat social network, have worked with First Data Corp. and Verifone Systems Inc. to recruit U.S. merchants for acceptance as more Chinese tourists and businesspeople go abroad. In the U.S. market, some 2.97 million Chinese tourists visited popular destinations in 2016, the latest year for which numbers are available from the Commerce Department. That represented a 15% increase from 2015. Those visitors spent $33 billion, up 9%.

Actual spending per user, however, was highest in France at $1,666 for the two summer months, with five other European nations claiming slots among the top 10, according to the figures release Wednesday At $432, the average total spending per user rose 43% over the same two months last year. Transaction growth was highest in Russia, site of soccer’s World Cup, where users conducted 50 times more transactions than in July and August 2017, Alipay reports.