This month in Zurich, the two formally sealed their relationship with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

By using the services of Alipay+, Ant Group's cross-border digital payments solutions company, the Paris-based group will be able to facilitate payments from more than 25 international mobile partners to merchants using the bank's acquiring offering throughout Europe.

Furthermore, using the Chinese company's blockchain-powered Whale platform, the bank is collaborating with Ant International to "explore innovations in tokenised deposits for global treasury management."

By using tokenized deposits, the partnership hopes to increase the "efficiency and speed of global fund settlements."

Ant International continues, saying that in order to enhance its Whale platform and "improve the efficiency and transparency of fund movement between bank accounts for better global liquidity management," it would take advantage of BNP Paribas' infrastructure.

In addition, the French bank has consented to support WorldFirst, a UK payments company that Ant International purchased in 2019 for $700 million, so that it may take part in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) program.

The London-based company plans to "leverage the bank's expertise and products to expedite its integration and onboarding onto SEPA," per a statement from the company.