Global e-commerce businesses, especially those built on platforms, like Shopify and Woocommerce, are reaching customers far beyond their home markets.
Yet, many still overlook the role payments play in unlocking that growth. As consumer expectations rise and more merchants expand from purely direct-to-consumer (D2C) into B2B or hybrid models, having a flexible, well-optimised payments strategy becomes essential. The right mix of global and local payment methods helps merchants convert more overseas shoppers, build trust in new markets, and reduce friction at checkout. Meanwhile, intelligent routing, cross-border optimisation, and robust fraud protection ensure that businesses can scale safely while keeping operational costs down. Learn more about Antom’s solution to power your e-commerce store.
“Asia also presents a significant opportunity, but many global merchants haven’t fully tapped its potential because of unfamiliarity with local payment methods – and this is where Antom and our Alipay+ wallet offering can quickly connect businesses to customers in Asia and beyond”, Sandra Li, Business Development Lead, US, Antom, Ant International, shares.
Watch the video to hear from Sandra on how e-commerce businesses can reach wider customer segments, uncover new revenue opportunities, and strengthen their competitive edge globally.
Watch the video
Transcript
I'm Sandra from the US Antom team as a BD, and I’m responsible for the Shopify partnership that we have, and also, I manage the travel and education verticals.
Our partnership with Shopify started about 6 years ago (2019) when they first looked into doing cross-border payment acceptance. So, we integrate into their third-party payment ecosystem providing all the Alipay+ wallets that we have, which is a major step for Shopify in helping merchants selling cross-border.
Today, we're seeing this need is actually getting stronger from Shopify’s merchant base and now we are looking into deepening our relationship – helping them in a bigger scope, looking into how to serve their merchants either selling to Asia, in different countries, or helping Asia-based Shopify merchants sell globally as well. Learn how Antom’s Shopify solution can help maximise your growth.
What payment services does Antom provide to Shopify merchants?
So for North American or European merchants selling into Asia, definitely the biggest value that we add is in the local payment method space, where the Asian payment landscape is drastically different than Western world, where credit card is not dominant so they really come to us rely on our local expertise on payment and we provide them the full suite of Alipay+ wallets and more payment methods that they need to expand their business in APAC. So that's one.
The second one is for the Asian merchant when they're selling globally, they need to accept payments from global credit cards and they want to get it from a partner like Ant, that they can trust, and in their home country so that we can help them to provide those payment methods when they expand outside of APAC.
So those are the two directions that we are helping in terms of e-commerce.
What trends are emerging in the e-commerce sector?
I think, on the market, or in the e-commerce or SaaS platform basis, I think a lot of the platforms are looking to move into the B2B space besides D2C. So in the B2B world, they're actually looking for a similar capability and functionality in terms of how they help the merchants sell to more of their customers – which is other merchants, and also provide them with the payment methods that they need.
So I think moving more to B2B, a lot of the partners that I talked to on the show (Shoptalk) is mentioning that trend. And then, also they're mentioning when they expand globally, really the speed is something that they're looking for so they don't want to work with like 10 different partners in order to cover a few countries. They want to work with one partner like Ant where they just need one integration and then they can serve the whole geographic area.
What are the main advantages to using Antom, given your expertise in the APAC region?
Frictionless payment is something that a lot of these e-commerce merchants are looking for. So they want a partner that that can let them have a frictionless checkout.
Some of our new products like EasySafePay or tokenisation of our wallets is something that really help with the speed and conversion at checkout.
Check out Antom’s solution for your Shopify store or speak with the team for more.
