Alibaba’s payment affiliate Alipay has joined with six mobile-payment service providers in Europe to collaborate on QR-code payments. The six parties – Bluecode, ePassi, momo pocket, Pagaqui, Pivo and Vipps – will use a QR code format provided by Alipay, covering more than 5 million digital wallet users and around 190,000 merchants in Europe. Bluecode and ePassi will offer technical services. Merchants that already accept mobile payments via the six apps will be able to accept payments by customers from other countries covered by the collaboration. Alipay users in China will be able to pay in Europe without downloading a separate app for each country. Rune Garbog, CEO of Oslo-based Vipps, said: “We are extremely enthusiastic about new partners joining this collaboration, giving all our combined users broader possibilities for using their preferred mobile app when traveling abroad,” the Shanghai Daily reports.

The use of mobile payment services in China has skyrocketed in the past five years, with the total number of transactions reaching CNY277.39 trillion last year, a rise of more than 27-fold from five years ago. The country is already the world’s biggest market for mobile payments, with some 583 million users last year, a rise of 10.7% from 2017. But the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has cracked down on merchants who refuse to accept cash, as1 billion people are regularly paying for items with their mobile phones. Sweden could be completely cashless by 2023, but about 1 million Swedes are not ready for digital payments, according to Christina Tallberg, President of the Swedish National Pensioners’ Organization. Some 600,000 elderly Swedes forced to use digital currency when using a public restroom or parking a car are some of the biggest opponents in the Scandinavian country of a cashless society. In the U.S., officials in San Francisco voted on May 8 to require brick-and-mortar retailers to accept cash, joining Philadelphia and New Jersey. Other U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago and Washington, are considering barring cashless stores to ensure that everyone can shop with cash, the China Daily reports.

According to a GSMA Mobile Economy Report last year, of the 7.7 billion people in the world, 5 billion used mobile services in 2017. It is estimated that the number of global mobile subscribers will reach 5.9 billion by 2025 — some 71% of the world’s population — which could lead to more people using their phones as payment devices.