Ant Group intends to use its technology to help restaurants recover from the pandemic, an executive said in explaining a move that will also help Ant further penetrate the region as China’s digital economy matures.

According to Ant’s announcement and DealStreetAsia’s database, the Alipay operator in August invested US$15 million in restaurant booking platform Chope, becoming its largest shareholder.

Chope says it will use Ant’s technology to offer a range of services.

“In the past, we served Chinese tourists,” Cherry Huang, Alipay’s general manager for global merchant partnership in South and Southeast Asia, told Nikkei Asia in an interview.

“Now we are looking at how to introduce some of our technology to local partners, like Chope, to serve the local people other than just to stay for the tourists.”

The Chope app, which covers megacities like Singapore, Jakarta and Bangkok, lists about 5,000 restaurants, and Ant’s partnership with the regional platform, Huang said, “opens the door for us to serve the local people”.

Before the pandemic, Ant’s Southeast Asia focus was on installing Alipay in local stores for Chinese tourists.

Alipay has found its way into over 1 million stores in Southeast Asia. But as Covid-19 dampened tourism, Ant began to look for new opportunities.

It intends to parlay its miniapp expertise through the partnership.

Big Chinese digital companies have made it easier for businesses to set up low-cost, quick-to-build miniapps inside their own apps.

As of March 2020, about 1.7 million miniapps were available inside Alipay, offering services from online shopping to banking.

Ant will support Southeast Asian restaurants and food-related businesses that build miniapps inside the Chope app. A miniapp can be created within a couple of days, Huang said.

As a result, consumers may be able to book tables, buy vouchers, check restaurant reviews and choose other food-related services on Chope.

Huang said the capital investment is a “definite signal” that Ant intends to have “a long-term, very strategic partnership (with Chope),” adding that it also “demonstrates our dedication to the Southeast Asian market”.

Noting that the food and beverage sector has been hit hard during the pandemic, she said helping the industry transform is part of Ant’s social responsibility.

The Chope partnership “would be definitely a good start for us to put more effort into helping the industry to recover in the region,” she said, hinting that Ant is on the lookout for future partnerships.

Boosting local merchants would improve Ant’s chances of expanding in the region.

In Singapore, for example, Ant is expected to launch a digital bank as early as next year.

Building relationships with local merchants would benefit the new bank, which will likely offer loans and deposit services to small and mid-size enterprises.

Huang declined to comment on potential synergy effects for its digital banking business, saying Ant is still preparing the digital bank and cannot provide further information.

For Chope and restaurants, Ant’s expertise offers improved recovery hopes. While restaurants were severely affected by the pandemic, they “also realised there were a lot of opportunities to be gained from technology”, Chope CEO Arrif Ziaudeen said. “It was a no-brainer that (Ant) was the correct partner for us to work with.”

For Ant Group, the partnership offers an expansion opportunity in Southeast Asia as its home market grows more saturated and competition intensifies. It also comes as Chinese regulators tighten oversight of domestic companies, giving them an impetus to seek growth opportunities abroad.

Among Chinese companies seeking overseas profits, Southeast Asia, with its historically strong cultural and economic ties to China, has been a preferred destination.

Ant already has stakes in several e-payment services in the region, including the Philippines’ Mynt and Indonesia’s Dana. Last year, it invested in Digital Money Myanmar, known as Wave Money.

Huang cited proximity to China in declaring Southeast Asia to be a “very important” market for Ant Group. “We will keep looking at new technology and innovations to introduce to the market,” she said.