Taxi-hailing service Uber and China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group have agreed a deal that will allow Chinese travelers to pay for a taxi in any country where Uber operates

Taxi-hailing service Uber and China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group have agreed a deal that will allow Chinese travelers to pay for a taxi in any country where Uber operates

It means they can pay for their rides in yuan using their Alipay accounts

US car sharing service Lyft and China’s Didi Chuxing recently launched a similar service

The growth in smartphone transport services is encouraging firms to build international partnerships

Before the agreement, mainland Chinese travelers using the Uber app overseas needed to connect a dual-currency credit card with their Uber account and were billed for their journeys in US dollars

Alipay is the online payment service of Ant Financial Services, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba

Alibaba is an investor in both Didi and Lyft, on top of its partnership with Uber

Uber said its customers had been able to use Alipay for their journeys in mainline China since 2014 and in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau since early 2016

The San Francisco-based company said the cross-border payments arrangement would cover mainland Chinese travelers in 400 cities

Uber and Alibaba said they intended to expand co-operation in India through Alipay’s links with Paytm, which is India’s largest mobile payment provider

Early last year, Ant Financial teamed up with parent company Alibaba to invest more than $500m (?341m) in Paytm

Didi, and Lyft have also joined forces with ride-hailing apps GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia and Ola in India

The four companies have formed a strategic partnership in a bid to compete with Uber