How to intergrate WeChat Pay and Alipay to your e-commerce checkout
Cover designed by Freepik
Imagine a potential customer has found their desired product and is ready to make a purchase, only to discover that their preferred payment method is not available. The result? They abandon their cart and turn directly to a competitor’s website.
The diversity and convenience of payment methods have a direct impact on e-commerce conversion rates.
Especially for Chinese consumers, WeChat Pay and Alipay are the payment methods they trust the most. Without them, you risk losing a significant number of orders. How can you integrate these payment options in your online business?
This article explains why integrating Alipay and WeChat Pay online is essential and how businesses can do it effectively. It outlines different integration methods, including API integration, PaybyLink, plugins, WeChat Mini-Programs, QR code payments, and in-app transactions. Silkpay provides an efficient and secure solution for each payment method, offering smooth payment processing, regulatory compliance, and enhanced customer experience.
Why integrate Alipay and WeChat Pay online?
Expanding your e-commerce business to the global market means considering the payment habits of your target customers.
According to data, Alipay and WeChat Pay account for 54.5% and 38.8% of mobile payment transaction volumes, respectively, while other third-party payment methods account for less than 7%. This indicates that these platforms have become the dominant payment methods for Chinese consumers.
For Chinese shoppers, WeChat Pay and Alipay are the most preferred payment options, processing billions of transactions daily.
If your e-commerce platform does not integrate these payment methods, you may lose a large number of potential customers, particularly those who prefer familiar payment solutions.
In a highly competitive e-commerce environment, optimizing the payment experience is crucial for improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
WeChat Pay and Alipay both provide convenient and secure payment solutions, enabling users to complete transactions easily without relying on international credit cards, which are relatively uncommon in China.
WeChat Pay is deeply integrated into the WeChat ecosystem, allowing users to make purchases directly through their accounts. Alipay, owned by Alibaba, is widely accepted across various e-commerce platforms. Integrating these two payment methods can significantly enhance customer trust, reduce purchasing obstacles, and ultimately increase sales.
How to intergrate WeChat Pay and Alipay online?
Integrating WeChat Pay and Alipay into your e-commerce store requires selecting the right method based on your business model and technical capabilities. Below are six main ways to integrate these payment solutions:
API integration
For businesses looking for complete control over their online payment process, API integration is the best option. Both WeChat Pay and Alipay offer APIs that allow direct integration with your website or application. This method provides full customization of the checkout experience and ensures a seamless transaction process.
Silkpay’s API Solution
Silkpay provides an easy-to-integrate API that allows businesses to accept WeChat Pay, Alipay+ (which includes 16+ Asian e-wallets), Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay and Amex.
Our API integration comes with clear documentation accessible via the merchant’s Silkpay backoffice, which simplifies the setup process and helps businesses start running quickly.
Additionally, our technical support team is always available to assist with integration. No technical expertise? No problem! Our team is here to support you every step of the way, ensuring you can start accepting payments smoothly without the stress of technical challenges.
Silkpay ensures that all transactions are secure, adhering to the latest industry standards for data encryption and compliance, offering both businesses and their customers peace of mind.
PaybyLink (Link payment)
If you don’t have the resources for a full API integration, or if you have no website but still want to sell your products and services online, PaybyLink is the best alternative.
Merchants can generate secure payment links through their Silkpay backoffice and send them to customers via email, SMS, or chat apps. Customers then click on the link to complete the payment using their preferred payment methods including WeChat Pay or Alipay.
Silkpay’s PaybyLink solution
Via their Silkpay backoffice, merchants can create payment links securely in just a few steps to send them to their customers:
The merchant selects PaybyLink from the menu.
The merchant fills out the PaybyLink creation form.
The payment link is generated and ready to be copied or automatically sent to the customer.
The generated PaybyLink remains valid until the customer completes the payment. Once the transaction is confirmed, the merchant can view it in the transaction history.
Silkpay's PaybyLink solution ensures a secure, seamless, and efficient payment experience, enabling merchants to accept payments with no integration effort at all.
This online payment solution is designed to meet the needs of large companies, small businesses, auto-entrepreneurs and even merchants with no website, providing an easy and accessible payment option.
Payment plugins for e-commerce platforms
For merchants using platforms like WooCommerce, Prestashop, plugins provide a hassle-free way to integrate WeChat Pay and Alipay. Many payment service providers offer pre-built plugins that require minimal configuration.
Silkpay’s payment plugin solution
Silkpay allows merchants to accept all popular global payment methods through PrestaShop and WooCommerce plugins, making integration easier than ever.
By adding Silkpay’s online payments to a PrestaShop e-commerce website, businesses can efficiently convert visitors into satisfied clients.
The Silkpay plugin ensures a smooth and secure transaction process, helping merchants expand their reach and increase revenue without complex integration efforts.
Our payment plugins are available for download on our website for our merchants.
WeChat mini-program payments
This payment solution is for businesses that have a WeChat mini-program. This method allows clients to shop and complete transactions within the WeChat app.
Silkpay’s mini-program payment solution
Silkpay provides WeChat Mini-Program payment integration, enabling merchants to offer a smooth and localized checkout experience within the WeChat app.
With Silkpay, businesses can set up WeChat Mini-Program payments quickly, ensuring fast and secure transactions while enhancing customer convenience. This solution helps merchants access the WeChat user base of millions of customers, increasing sales potential and customer retention.
In addition to integrating payments, Silkpay also offers the ability to create fully functional mini-program shops, allowing businesses to establish their presence on WeChat.
In-App payments
For businesses with their own mobile applications, in-app payments provide a smooth checkout experience. WeChat Pay and Alipay offer SDKs that can be embedded directly into an app to facilitate payments.
Silkpay’s In-App payment solution
Silkpay enables businesses to integrate multiple payment methods directly into their mobile apps. Through Silkpay’s solution, merchants can accept WeChat Pay, Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay and Alipay+ including 16+ Asian e-wallets.
We ensure merchants have everything they need to build customer loyalty, boost conversions, and minimize cart abandonment, making every sale go through smoothly.
Why choose Silkpay for integrating online payments?
Silkpay, trusted by thousands of merchants around the world, offers businesses an all-in-one payment solution to integrate WeChat Pay and Alipay for their online business.
By integrating Alipay+, our merchants can automatically accept 16+ major e-wallets from China, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and more, expanding their reach to more than 100 million customers effortlessly. What more could a business need than happy customers and more sales?
Silkpay’s solutions also support multiple integration options, including API, PaybyLink, plugins for major e-commerce platforms, in-app, and WeChat Mini-Programs.
Conclusion
Integrating WeChat Pay and Alipay into your e-commerce checkout is essential for businesses targeting Chinese consumers. These payment methods dominate the Chinese market, offering a seamless and trusted transaction experience. By implementing the right integration method, whether through API, PaybyLink, plugins, WeChat Mini-Programs, or in-app transactions, merchants can optimize their checkout process and increase conversion rates.
Silkpay simplifies this process by providing a secure and efficient payment gateway tailored for international merchants. With features such as API integration, QR code payments, multilingual support, and regulatory compliance.
About the author: Silkpay
Based in Paris, Silkpay provides omnichannel and secure payment solutions to help physical stores and e-commerce in Europe and the Americas accept more than 30 of the world's most popular payment methods: Visa, Mastercard, CB, UnionPay, Alipay+, WeChat Pay as well as Asia-Pacific’s major e-wallets.
Silkpay is a winner of the LVMH Innovation Award. The company was also selected as a finalist for the "Money 20/20" Best Startup and in the "MPE Berlin” Startup Awards. Silkpay also won the "Best Fintech" awards from Capgemini and BPCE.
Silkpay helps merchants deliver the smoothest payment experience to their customers. We are a talented and international team driven by a single goal: to improve the customer experience and make payments simple and secure.