South Korean supermarket chain Lotte Mart will start supporting the Chinese payment service Alipay to better appeal to Chinese customers ahead of Lotte’s largest shopping festival of the year.

Lotte Mart and nine other retail affiliates of the Korean retail giant Lotte Group will kick off Lotte Black Festa on Thursday, the group’s annual six-day shopping spree similar to China’s Singles Day and the U.S. Black Friday.

Lotte Mart said the use of Alipay in Korea has surged in recent years amid the rise of Chinese tourists. According to Alipay, the amount of its mobile transactions in Korea during the Chinese Golden Week holiday from Oct. 1 to 7 nearly doubled from the year-ago period. The number of Chinese visitors to Korea also jumped 36.4 percent on year to 434,595 in September, according to Korea Tourism Organization. In the January-September period, Korea received 3.49 million Chinese tourists, up 9.4 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Lotte Mart expects the adoption of Alipay to help boost sales among Chinese shoppers as credit card purchases and tax refunds have been made more convenient.

Lotte Group had been particularly hard hit from the recent diplomatic spat between South Korea and China. In March 2017, Beijing imposed a ban on group tours to Korea in retaliation of Seoul’s decision to install a U.S. missile shield, resulting in a sharp drop in the number of big-spending Chinese tourists to Korea. Lotte Mart was also a key target of a state-initiated boycott after it was revealed that Lotte Group provided the land for the missile battery deployment. After incurring huge losses, Lotte Mart announced it was completely pulling out of China by the end of the year.

By Lee Yoo-jin and Kim Hyo-jin

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