In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company Ant Financial remains Hangzhou-based.

[3] According to the statistics of the fourth quarter of 2018, Alipay has a 55.32% share of the third-party payment market in mainland China, and it continues to grow.

[4][5][6] Along with WeChat, Alipay has been described to be China's super-app with a wide range of functionalities including ridesharing, travel booking and medical appointments.

Chinese business publication Century Weekly criticised Ma, who stated that Alibaba Group's board of directors was aware of the transaction.

[17]: 33  It soon became China's largest online money market fund and prompted competitors like Baidu and Tencent to introduce alternatives.

[21] In 2021, the mandate by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to open up the "walled garden" ecosystems of the major tech companies has led to the introduction of interoperability of payment QR codes of Alipay and competing WeChat Pay and UnionPay's Cloud QuickPass platforms.

[22] Alipay states that it operates with more than 65 financial institutions including Visa and MasterCard[23] to provide payment services for Taobao and Tmall as well as more than 460,000 online and local Chinese businesses.

[24] The Alipay app also provides features such as credit card bill payments, bank account managements, P2P transfer, prepay mobile phone top-up, bus and train ticket purchases, food orders, vehicles for hire, insurance selections and a digital identification document storage.

[26] The Alipay app allows users to add their own services provided from different companies to create a more personalised experience.

[33] In November 2019, Alipay introduced Tourpass,[34] a service component that allows non-Chinese users to use its mobile payment feature by pre-loading Chinese Yuan equivalent foreign currency into the app.

Ant Group had acquired a majority stake into 2C2P, a Singapore-based provider used by merchants worldwide in April 2022, and would eventually integrate Alipay with 2C2P.

In a joint venture with CK Hutchison, as Alipay Payment Services (HK), it launched the "AlipayHK" brand.

[46] The service then became available in major chain stores including McDonald's, 7-Eleven and Circle K.[47] Wet markets and other merchants were also supported.

[51] AUB also introduced WeChat Pay, and intends to use both payment systems to cater to Chinese tourists visiting the country.

[52] Ant Financial also has invested on Mynt, the operator of the mobile service GCash which caters to the Philippine market.

[59] Currently in Vietnam, Davitrans, a proxy shipping service, is the only website in the country that accepts Alipay as one of its payment methods.

In February 2019, Alipay and Tourism Australia announced a service to promote Australian destinations to Chinese tourists using the city of Sydney as a 12-month pilot project.

[71][72] Alipay partnered with UniCredit, SIA and Banca Sella Group to enable app payments in physical and online stores in Italy.

Although users receive immediate notification of the transaction, the main difference among Alipay and an instant payment system, like Venmo or Zelle is that the funds transfer between counterparties is not immediate.

At the time it was implemented and integrated into Taobao, the mandatory escrow feature of Alipay was a major institutional innovation for e-commerce platforms.

The move essentially split Ant Group's consumer lending businesses, credit card-like Huabei and micro-loan provider Jiebei, from Alipay's financial offerings.