National Australia Bank has taken the first step towards adding Alipay to its menu of payments services after its New Zealand subsidiary BNZ entered a strategic deal with the Chinese payments giant.Bank of New Zealand is now piloting Alipay on its merchant terminals with a view to rolling out the capability across most of its network in a matter of weeks.Banking Day understands that each of the four major banks are in talks with Alipay's Australian management to embed the Chinese payments platform in local merchant terminals.Negotiations are said by bank sources to be advanced at NAB and ANZ.The big banks are under pressure to deliver the capability as Australian ecommerce businesses marketing products to Chinese consumers gravitate to startup payments providers such as Latipay that leverage the Alipay platform.Latipay's New Zealand arm has helped to drive a boom in Alipay subscriptions among Kiwi merchants."Alipay acceptance in New Zealand has grown from fewer than 300 merchants 12 months ago to several thousand today," said Alipay's head of Australia and New Zealand, George Lawson.Alipay is the largest online payments processer in the world, with more than 600 million Chinese subscribers.In China, the platform is now the standard method used by consumers to make purchases online, and its success has stymied efforts by Visa and Mastercard to penetrate the Chinese market.Alipay recently embarked on a program to deliver its payments service to in-store merchants across the world.BNZ is among the first banks in the southern hemisphere to embed the platform in its merchant terminal network.The bank's strategic aim is to acquire new merchants in the tourism and hospitality industries by offering an instant payments solution for Chinese tourists visiting New Zealand.Alipay fills a gap in the tourism industry because most Chinese consumers do not subscribe to the global credit card schemes such as Visa and Mastercard.Chinese visitors spent more than $NZ1.5 billion in New Zealand last year and this is expected to rise to $NZ4.3 billion by 2023.BNZ will initially offer Alipay to merchants through Verifone payment terminals, which will generate an Alipay QR code that the Chinese tourist scans on to their mobile phone to complete the transaction.The bank said it would progressively add the capability to other point-of-sale devices in its merchant fleet.