Athens Airport Partners with ‘Alipay’, Becomes Chinese-friendly

Photo Source: Athens International Airport (AIA)

In efforts to enhance its services and become a Chinese-friendly airport, Athens International Airport (AIA) has entered into an agreement with Alipay, a leading online and mobile payment platform, currently counting 520 million users around the world.

With the number of Chinese travelers to Greece on the rise, the agreement aims to further facilitate Chinese travelers when visiting Greece and is part a broader scheme currently implemented by AIA. The service will be available as of December 2017.

Athens International Airport CEO Yiannis Paraschis at the 5th Airport Chief Executives’ Symposium.

The announcement was made by the airport’s CEO Yiannis Paraschis, during the 5th Airport Chief Executives’ Symposium (ACES), which was recently held in Athens.

According to Paraschis, Athens Airport currently features announcements and signs in the Chinese language, while it’s been developing customized food and beverage outlets in order  to meet the demand of travelers from China.

Alipay is an online platform of leading Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group. Founded in 1999, Alibaba is a Chinese e-commerce company active in consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals. It is also providing electronic payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services.