Sociotechnical enveloping: Productization of APIs and the transnational expansion of Alipay+

Abstract

Platform-based big techs are making substantial inroads into cross-border payment (CBP) businesses, with far-reaching implications for medium to small enterprises, outsourced labor providers, migrant communities, international travelers, and financial institutions. This research examines the material foundations and social mechanisms that drive platformization in this domain. Drawing on application programming interface (API) analysis, industry interviews, and policy analyses revolving around the case of Alipay+, a mobile payment app that allows international consumers to use their home e-wallet to pay for their purchases abroad, this article highlights how the productization of APIs fuels what I call sociotechnical enveloping—a dynamic process through which dominant platforms rapidly align with or subsume emerging platforms in partnered countries. This process is rooted in the technological affordance of APIs, fulfilled through the API-mediated communications between stakeholders, and utilizes API as products and services to extend the platform logic into global financial infrastructures. By connecting platform evolution research in management information systems with social studies of fintech, this article advances a materially grounded and more nuanced account of platformization, offering deeper insight into the global consolidation of platform power.

Introduction

The platform has become an almost hegemonic idea in our economic lives (Gillespie, 2017). It denotes a software and hardware ecosystem designed to provide a terminal to engage users and connect them with the potential purchase of products or services (Athique and Kumar, 2022). Terminals of platformization have proved highly versatile, ranging from social media (Chen et al., 2018), instant messaging (Kwak et al., 2020), mobile payment apps (Swartz, 2020; Wang and Doan, 2019), educational software (Kerssens and van Dijck, 2023), to healthcare platform (Charitsis, 2019). In everyday economic life, we are introduced to these platform services, and our interactions with these versatile platforms augment their hegemonic power. This is a matter of strategic intent and, thus, an important attribute of the increasingly ubiquitous platform economy (Kenny and Zysman, 2016). In the meantime, the persistent and continual growth of platforms is undergirded by an encompassing set of management logics: while platforms are designed as “transactional intermediaries” (Steinberg, 2019) between markets or between third parties, they become irreplaceable channels for the transaction of consumption data, payment information, and consumer profiles (Westermeier, 2020). Consequently, it has become axiomatic that wherever transactions are taking place, there is a business opportunity for platformized services.

The continual growth of the platform economy is particularly evident in mobile payments, an increasingly visible yet much understudied digital services sector. Embedded in people's everyday economic lives, payment platforms facilitate monetary transactions at both the individual and institutional levels. In China, fintech corporations, such as Ant Financial and Tencent Finance, have built the largest payment platforms in the world, where more than one billion people use payment apps like Alipay or WeChat Wallet (Statista, 2024). These payment apps also provide vital transaction and settlement services to e-commerce websites (e.g. Taobao, Shine, Temu), third-party service providers (e.g. Eleme, TikTok), and public services (e.g. City Service on Alipay). The all-in-one app design exemplifies how “platform ecosystems” (Athique and Kumar, 2022) structure digital economies in both national and global contexts.

Recently, the growth of payment platforms has spilled over borders. For instance, Alipay and WeChat Wallet have been extending the reach of their mobile payment service among international users. During their international travels or studies, Chinese tourists and international students commonly make payments and transfers through these two apps in Chinese yuan, with the apps providing receivable accounts for local merchants and settling payments in their native currencies. What's more, the new service named Alipay+ allows users in different countries to make cross-border payments (CBPs) with their local currencies and home e-wallet. The story of platform expansion continues when we see domestic payment platforms in various countries get integrated by super apps, such as Alipay, which brings us new phenomena to enrich the understanding of platformization (Poell et al., 2019).

Officially launched in 2022, Alipay+ has partnered with 33 payment apps globally, as of June 2025, to provide CBP services. For example, based on the partnership between Alipay+ and the Korean payment service Kakao Pay, Korean visitors to China can use Kakao Pay to make transactions at stores equipped with Alipay+, without the need to install any additional app. Likewise, Chinese visitors to Korea can also make payments through Alipay+, based on synchronization with Kakao Pay. Similarly, a South Korean visitor to the Philippines can use their Kakao Pay wallet to pay at any store supported by Alipay+ . Someone from Malaysia can pay at such stores with Touch’n Go or Boost, and visitors from Philippine can use their domestic GCash Wallet. Moreover, when Sri Lanka consumers travel abroad, they can use LankaPay, and Japanese visitors can use PayPay, if they see the Alipay+ sticker upon their payment.

Although Alipay+ is still in a nascent stage of business development which subject to regulatory changes, the provision and growth of CBP services through international aggregation and interoperability (Baldwin and Clark, 2006) between Alipay and local payment platforms demonstrates a new component of China's platform economy, as well as a new mechanism of platformization in the global financial network. Rather than a déjà vu of Alipay's domestic expansion (Kapron, 2022), Alipay+ is part of a novel phenomenon that instantiates the sophisticated creation and unending expansion of platform businesses across borders.

Such a complex demands an interdisciplinary frame to deepen the analyses. Management information systems (MIS) research has devoted significant attention to the software architectures that sustain longevity and enhance the resilience of software ecosystems. Central to this work is the identification of application programming interfaces (APIs) and envelopment as core mechanisms for scalable integration (e.g. Tiwana et al., 2010)—a strategy now widely embraced by fintech firms. Among them, CBP systems stand out as leading adopters. As payment technologies evolve and proliferate, they have attracted growing interest from scholars concerned with their social and political implications (e.g. Lai, 2023; Langley and Leyshon, 2021; O’Dwyer, 2023). Drawing on the insights from MIS and social studies of fintech, this paper asks, what enabled the unending growth of digital payment platforms, especially in the cross-border context? How can the expansion of CBP platforms, such as Alipay+, contribute to understanding platformization and its social implications?

The case of Alipay+ reveals an understudied dynamic that I call sociotechnical enveloping—a process through which dominant payment platforms align with or absorb emerging ones in the partnered countries. This dynamic unfolds on both technical and social fronts. Technically, APIs, especially open APIs, serve as powerful interfaces, mediating and integrating interactions (Helmond et al., 2019) between the enveloping and enveloped platforms. Socially, the expansion of Alipay+ is enabled by an ensemble of communicative, business, and political factors, all of which hinge on APIs.

Specifically, enveloping is enacted through sustained online and offline communications, both in code and in natural language, among stakeholders working to enhance API interoperability. Moreover, as platform companies face intensifying competition (Narayan, 2023) and saturated domestic markets, they turn outward in search of growth. In this context, Alipay began offering APIs as products and services, enabling its customer platforms to extend their international reach. This productization of APIs not only fortified Alipay's capacity to envelop other platforms but also equipped the other dominant players with new tools to integrate or subsume their emerging counterparts using the protocols provided by Alipay. Last but not least, policy environments have actively enabled such envelopments. The international licensing regime for CBP businesses has been increasingly expansive and facilitative (Deloitte, 2024). The Chinese government has backed Alipay's overseas expansion, recognizing its strategic role in advancing China's e-commerce economy. Likewise, many of Alipay's partner countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, prioritize innovation and economic growth over stringent data security controls or technological sovereignty. These aligned policy orientations create a ground for dominant platforms to extend their reach and embed themselves more deeply into foreign financial infrastructures.

As such, the idea of sociotechnical enveloping seeks to unfold how payment platforms in different countries are integrated and to intervene in the velocity of monetary flow (Athique and Goggin, in this Special Issue). It highlights the extended role of API in enabling the relentless growth of platforms. The concept of sociotechnical enveloping provides a materially grounded account of platformization by examining how APIs function not only as technical tools but also as communication conduits, products, services, and strategic assets in platform expansion. Moreover, it reveals how the global consolidation of platform power is achieved not only through scale and network effects, but also through the deliberate embedding of platform logic into financial infrastructures across borders, reconfiguring market relationships and competitive dynamics worldwide.

Payment platforms as a transdisciplinary topic

Platform studies have evolved into an interdisciplinary arena, continually enriching research topics. Researchers share the topic of the platform but unfold its nature from very diverse perspectives, including but not limited to media and communication studies (e.g. Chen et al., 2018), sociology (Vallas and Schor, 2020), critical data studies (Sadowski, 2019), infrastructure studies (e.g. Edwards, 2021), and political economy (e.g. Zhang and Carpano, 2023). Despite their distinct disciplinary background, these research works intersect when they view platforms as tech-based, dynamic ecosystems, where the power struggles and balances among various stakeholders continually drive the development of these platforms. Platforms are not static but processual.

This section endeavors to elucidate the technical foundations of platformization and how the attributes of powerful software dynamize the rise of payment platforms. In doing so, it connects the relevant literature in MISs research with social studies of fintech. To develop insights on the mechanisms of platforms, there is a strong need to understand the technical foundations, especially in relation to their social and cultural ramifications (Andreessen, 2007; Bogost and Montfort, 2009). Most of the existing research suggests that the continued growth of the platform primarily depends on its organizational arrangements, particularly on employment and labor (Wood et al., 2019), marketing, particularly production and content strategies (Steinberg et al., 2022), and the political economy of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2016). More recently, an increasing number of scholars have turned to the material and technological attributes of platformization. They consider computational platforms (Bogost and Montfort, 2009) as the basis for the platform economy, and API plays a crucial role in enabling platform evolution (Ghazawneh and Henfridsson, 2013).

API and platform evolution

To anatomize the platform evolution, we first need to make sense of several technical elements and communicate the meaning of the jargon in a way that is accessible for nonspecialists beyond software studies. MIS scholars consider the platform to be “the extensible codebase” (Baldwin and Woodard, 2008) for the modules to function as a system. The modules are also composed of codes, but they are “add-on software subsystems” plugged into the platform to add various functions to the platform (Sanchez and Mahoney, 1996). They are plugged in through interfaces, which refer to design rules that define how models and platforms interact and exchange information (Katz and Shapiro, 1994). A platform will be more competitive, rigorous, and long-lasting than the other platforms if it has a malleable codebase, versatile modules, and communicative interfaces (Tiwana et al. 2010). In actual work at platform companies, this kind of interface is termed as API.

While codebase, modules, and APIs are essential to compose a platform ecosystem, APIs are pivotal to making the system vibrant. Generically, API is a set of coding languages used to describe the connections between modules or between modules and the code base. The APIs adhere to specific standards (typically HTTP and REST), which enable APIs to be developer-friendly, self-described, easily accessible, and understood broadly (Ofoeda et al., 2019). API has its own software development lifecycle—from mocking, designing, testing to building, managing, and retiring. They are designed for consumption by specific users (e.g. mobile app developers), and they are documented and versioned to enable users to have clear expectations of their maintenance and lifecycle.

APIs are indispensable connectors between modules and their base platform. They are also the boundary resources that allow two platforms to communicate with each other using a set of shared bilateral languages (Jacobson et al., 2012). APIs provide a common ground for software to talk to each other. This common ground enables different platforms to exchange information. They can create value by exchanging information and services between and within organizations (Iyer and Subramaniam, 2015). As connectivity and interoperability (Baldwin and Clark, 2006) have become key to platform expansion, APIs are increasingly viewed as products rather than code—they are a technical component of a platform and a source of revenue and innovation. The highlights on API, or the so-claimed power of API economy (Holley et al., 2014), reveal the sophisticated means of production in platform development.

API matters not only for the making of a platform but also defines the power dynamics of the larger platform ecosystem. The API-mediated communication between platform owners and complementors has formed a “central power cycle” (Hurni et al., 2022) in which the complementors repeatedly evaluate whether to accept or reject how the platform owner defines APIs. In the case of free and open-source software, controlling open-source software can grant companies logistical power that enables them to influence standards and shape the Internet as an infrastructure for digital capitalism (Zhang and Carpano, 2023). Similarly, the super Software Development Kit developed and reserved by platform companies serves as the super conduits for collecting personal data and the primary means of platform monopolization (Pybus and Coté, 2024).

API technology in financial services

In financial industries, investment management firms first adopted the application of APIs in the mid-1970s (Keyes, 2000). They utilized this technology to seamlessly integrate third-party data such as rates, fund performance, and transaction settlements into their desktop applications for management purposes. API technology was also applied to personal wealth management. Personal finance management software uses this technology to connect to payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard, allowing customers to view their credit card bill details within the software. However, at that time, API technology was mainly used for sharing information rather than for transactions. Nowadays, API technology has become pivotal for the growth of payment platforms (Agrawal, 2019). API technology not only allows different financial software to share information, enabling users’ financial data to be synchronized across various applications, but it also empowers users to manage funds across different financial institutions flexibly.

Recently, technological advancements have also become prominent in CBP businesses. CBP refers to the business practices and industries that help the payer and payee (and typically through their financial institutions) in transactions located in different countries and require intermediaries operating in multiple jurisdictions (e.g. Bech, 2020). Unlike domestic payments conducted within a single country's borders, cross-border transactions involve the movement of money between parties located in different jurisdictions. For example, a U.S. tourist purchases souvenirs from a gift shop in Shanghai using a credit card issued by Bank of America. Upon completing the transaction, the payment issued from the tourist's bank account must traverse international borders to reach the bank account of the shop owners. CBP mechanisms serve as the conduit for this financial exchange, enabling the seamless transfer of funds across disparate geographical locations. The application of big data, cloud computing, and intelligent software in CBP has made payment transactions faster and more cost-efficient and created a profitable and sophisticated business domain. The mega payment platforms, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, have become the transaction portal for everyday life. Furthermore, as the domestic market becomes saturated, a trend emerges of CBP services jointly provided by major platforms across different countries (Chiang, 2024). The handshakes between the domestic payment giants for international expansion signify an unending growth of platforms. This evolution underscores the crucial role of API technology in advancing the functionality and growth of digital payment platforms.

The application of fintech in payment systems has long been a focal point of social science inquiry, attracting critical attention to its economic, social, and political ramifications within evolving financial infrastructures. Scholars such as Maurer (2023), O’Dwyer (2023), and Swartz (2020) argue that payment systems function not simply as technical instruments but as sociopolitical infrastructures that organize value, trust, and governance. Complementing this work on the social attributes of financial infrastructures in domestic contexts, Rella's (2019, 2020) research on blockchain technology and international banking demonstrates how digital infrastructures reconfigure global financial flows and institutional arrangements. Within this framework, APIs emerge as both building blocks of these infrastructures and expressions of the dominant power or ideologies that shape them. Social studies of fintech provide a critical foundation for conceptualizing APIs not merely as technical interfaces but as active agents in the transformation and extension of global financial systems.

As a fintech component, APIs allow platforms to integrate internal or external software modules, facilitating interoperability, innovation, and revenue generation in a platform ecosystem. Also, APIs are central to the power dynamics of a platform since they allow the dominant platform to enclose complementor platforms. The API-mediated communication between platform owners and complementors is crucial for the platform's vitality and continuous growth. Dominant platforms tend to develop APIs that are widely adopted due to their simplicity, accessibility, and ease of use. In other words, platforms that successfully integrate or subsume others often do so by establishing APIs, software development standards, and communicative frameworks that become the industry norm, reinforcing their position within the digital ecosystem. The sophisticated role of API reveals that platform power is not a monolithic force, but a nuanced and evolving process shaped by its formation and adoption in the interplatform integrations and aggregations.

Methods

The API mechanism provides opportunities to study what is inside the digital payment black box. This research employs technography (Bucher, 2018) as a method to elucidate the operational logic of software shaped by various stakeholders and its intended purposes. In particular, the technography of Alipay+ consists of two parts: (1) the text analyses of the API documents guided by the research questions, and (2) interviews with tech professionals and executives who have more than seven years of work experience in the CBP industries. In addition, this article situates the technographic analyses within the specific policy context, which is both shaping and shaped by the domestic and international policy settings for Chinese CBP industries.

First, it conducted a nuanced analysis of the API documents provided by Alipay+, with a special focus on who are the users of the API, how they communicate, based on what kind of shared protocols lead to what kind of collaborations, and for what outcomes. The answers to these questions map out the key players and the operational logic shaping the CBP ecosystem of Alipay+ . Alipay+ has made the introductory API documents publicly available online. On the one hand, the publicity is in compliance with the requirements for international financial transactions. On the other hand, this ensures that potential collaborators can access the documents conveniently, thereby easing communication between Alipay and external software developers. Nevertheless, many platform companies choose to provide their API documents on a per-request basis rather than making them publicly available. Also, Alipay+ has set the operational API documents only available for business partners.

Specifically, the API docs are provided on the webpage, https://docs.alipayplus.com/alipayplus, which can be accessed on the Resources channel of Alipay+'s official website. The API documents include six comprehensive sectors: Rules and Standards, introduction to the Alipay+ Products, Alipay+ Brand Guidelines, step-by-step Integration Guides, Tools and Resources, and News Release. The information in all six sectors is carefully examined. In the Rules and Standards sector, Standards are open to the public, but the Rules (including the operation guides) are available only for log-in users. These are the programmers who apply to Alipay+ for access to the software development protocols. Also, Alipay+ puts the API documents on the website but most of the other payment platforms have their API booklets (usually in PDF format) available upon request.

Besides the API analyses, this research conducted eight in-depth interviews with professionals, executives, and academics based on a set of semistructured questions (see the roster of these informants in Appendix I). The interviewees included five tech professionals and two executives who were currently working or had once worked in CBP businesses. All of them have seven or more years of experience in this business. Only two of them are affiliated with Alipay to avoid bias or marketing of the company. The eighth interviewee is an academic with 22 years of experience in teaching and research in software engineering. The document's analysis in step one of the above-mentioned steps has generated useful findings and questions that require specialized knowledge to address. The eight interviews helped answer those questions and deepened the understanding of Alipay's API mechanisms.

In addition, this article discusses the policy and regulatory environment, particularly the extra-territorial regulation and compliance (Liao and Li, 2013) that are crucial to the formation of the Alipay+ platform. The international licensing system for CBP businesses has been liberal and market-oriented. Additionally, Alipay+ has capitalized on the international policy vacuum regarding data security in CBPs and the Chinese government's support for cross-border commerce. These three policy elements collectively constitute the positive political-economic settings for Alipay's sociotechnical enveloping processes.

Alipay+, a platform for and of many platforms

This section first maps out the ecosystem of Alipay+ and sorts out the typology of users, service providers, and service categories. It then analyzes the role and features of API in enabling the internal and external integrations for and by the Alipay company. Lastly, it demonstrates how these roles and the corresponding API-based practices contribute to sociotechnical enveloping, the dynamics for Alipay's transnational expansion.

Alipay+ and the ecosystem

More than 300 million Chinese consumers use Alipay (also known as zhi fu bao) to make payments in everyday life. In the meantime, Alipay is also a private company named after this payment app. The company used to be a business division of Alibaba's e-commerce platform. In 2004, Alipay was registered as an independent payment service company and a subsidiary of Ant Financial (renamed Ant Group in 2020), the Hangzhou-headquartered tech corporation that provides cloud computing services to financial enterprises and payment/financial services to consumers. In 2015, Ant Group began investing in or supporting payment platform companies in Southeast Asian countries, which strategically laid the foundation for the official launch of Alipay+ in 2022 (recorded from the company tour on Ant Open Day, June 1, 2024). Although inheriting the branding of Alipay, Alipay+ was born to a distinct track: (1) it is managed by Ant International rather than Ant Group, along with Ant's other fintech brands: Antom, WorldFirst, and ANEXT Bank; (2) it was registered in Singapore and focuses on IT consulting and outsourcing services to CBP service providers (PitchBook, 2024). To be sure, these distinct but connected companies have played significant roles in enabling the rise of fintech in China, as well as setting the paradigm of data-driven innovation (Wang, 2022). However, the parent companies, Ant Group and Alipay highlight their strengths in “fin” or financial services, whereas Alipay+ envisions its strengths in “tech” or a “developer of cross-border mobile payment and marketing solutions for global brands and mobile-savvy consumers” (Alipay+, 2024).

Despite these distinctions, Alipay+ has benefited from Alipay in at least three aspects. First, Alipay has provided a network of millions of e-commerce merchants doing export business, especially those involved in cross-border e-commerce. Also, Alipay+'s international expansion has been partly driven by the overseas spending of Chinese tourists. Their outbound consumption created the initial demand and practical foundation for Alipay to develop APIs that are efficient and compatible with local payment systems in East and Southeast Asia. Second, Alipay has formed a strong bond with these small and micro enterprises via value-added services, such as handling logistics and optimizing the foreign exchange rates (Informant V). Specifically, the company has leveraged its advantages in big data and infrastructure to assist these merchants with currency conversion processes, compliance with diverse regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions, and handling the intricacies of international banking systems. Third, Alipay has formed a set of widely accepted communication protocols and standards to ensure uniformity and consistency in message formatting across different financial institutions and countries. Moreover, Alipay's technology of encryption and security protocols embedded in the communication processes ensures the confidentiality, transparency, and traceability of data transmitted between the payer and payee.

The transactions can be classified based on the payment entities, including interenterprise payments and individual payments. It can also be divided into various payment scenarios, such as international trade, cross-border e-commerce, education, and tourism, among others. Alipay+ primarily serves three categories of customers for their CBPs: consumer or app users, businesses or merchants, and the government. They use Alipay+ for nine types of services, and regardless of the types, the payment information flows between the Acquiring Service Provider (ASP), Alipay+, and the customers. For example, in the C to C scenario, Alipay+ completes the international remittance between two friends living in different countries and using different currencies (based on the interview with Informant V) (Table 1).

Table 1.

CBP service categories of Alipay+.

C 1 to C e.g. International remittance to friends or family	C to B Payments for e-commerce purchases abroad	C to G Payment for taxes for property or overseas assets
B to C Salaries to employees working abroad	B to B Trade payments to foreign suppliers	B to G Tariffs paid by exporters to authorities abroad
G to C Salaries to diplomats working abroad	G to B Governmental payment to foreign suppliers	G to G Payments related to international aid

Note: CBP: cross-border payment.

The Alipay+ ecosystem, as illustrated in Figure 1, exemplifies a comprehensive architecture for facilitating CBPs and commerce. It operates under the regulatory authorities (central bank and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange), which have secured its license and fostered trust and reliability in cross-border transactions. On the international dimension, the overall licensing systems support the cross-border construction of financial infrastructure (Deloitte, 2024). In some markets, regulators apply a “sandbox” mechanism for developing regulation that keeps up with the fast pace of innovation. Since 2016, Alipay+ has obtained payment licenses in 33 countries, and its penetration in some areas, including Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Korea, is deeper than in others, including Thailand, Sweden, Mongolia, Macao, and Italy (see the list of countries in Appendix II). Also, this list has aggregated the information scattered in many places and provides data for future research in the social studies of CBPs.

Figure 1.

The ecosystem of Alipay+ services.

Specifically, from the payment account to the Receipt Account, CBPs involve three major steps: acquiring, payment collection, and foreign exchange settlement. Payment scenarios include export e-commerce, import e-commerce, and offline overseas transactions. In export e-commerce, acquiring is mainly divided into global card acquiring for platform-based export e-commerce (e.g. PayPal, Adyen) and global card acquiring for independent export e-commerce (e.g. iPayLinks, Worldpay). For import e-commerce and offline overseas transactions, acquiring is handled through overseas acquiring, both online and offline, enabling merchants to accept payments from international customers. Alipay+ plays a crucial role in this process, thus expanding merchants’ global reach and facilitating cross-border commerce. In terms of payment collection, major institutions, including Alipay, Amazon, and NetEase, ensure that funds are efficiently transferred from the payor to the payee. Thirty licensed domestic institutions, such as Chinabank Payments, Alipay, and Tenpay, manage foreign exchange settlements, ensuring funds reach the recipient account. Supporting institutions facilitate the smooth operation of the ecosystem, including domestic and international e-commerce platforms (Amazon, eBay, Tmall Global), logistics services (FedEx, SF Express), marketing and promotion platforms (Google, YouTube), and financial support providers (Bank of America, China UnionPay) (based on the interviews with Informant I).

The three-layered role of APIs in CBP

In such a sophisticated ecosystem, monetary transactions are properly handled only when payment information is clearly communicated between multiple actors. APIs have played three types of interconnected roles to enable, smooth, and enhance these communications. They are code-based program interfaces mediating the transactional parties. Also, they constitute a set of communication practices in which certain types of protocols, standards, and measurements are developed to gauge the validity and effectiveness of the payment information communicated. Moreover, the more powerful or dominant platforms have turned APIs into products or services. These innovative offerings helped the dominant payment platform to integrate the other emerging ones.

APIs as technical interfaces

For Alipay+, the programming interfaces function mainly for three purposes: verification, connection, and compliance, and different types of API play a pivotal role in these communication processes (Informant III). As listed in Table 2, after the merchant's Pos machine receives user data from the Channel APP (e.g. LINE Pay in Thailand), it forwards user data to the Industry Service in the Industry Service login interface INDUSTRY_LOGIN_INFO. The Industry Service receives the user data and completes user logs in after successful signature verification. Interface provider: Industry Service URL format: https://{INDUSTRY_INDEX_URL}?request_data={INDUSTRY_LOGIN_INFO}

Table 2.

Three types of communications in CBP platforms.

Purpose	Who are the communicators	What has been communicated	Types of APIs involved
Verification	Technical architects, research and development engineers, testing engineers, and service engineers.	Bank account information	Internal
Connection	Service engineers at the payment platform companies	Payment information, such as how much, in what currency	Internal and/or external
Compliance	Service engineers at the payment platform companies	Compliance information, Know-your-customer, frequency check, amount check	Open to public

CBP: cross-border payment; API: application programming interface.

Alipay's software component generally encompasses three types of APIs: those solely for internal use, those exclusively for business partners, and those open to the public. APIs restricted to internal use primarily serve software development within the enterprise and collaboration between departments. APIs opened to business partners are necessary for operational collaboration; for instance, when payers and recipients use different payment software, interoperability is essential, thus requiring an open API. The third category, open to the public, primarily comprises a form of crowdsourcing. And enabling the provision of new products and services. However, such APIs are seldom utilized in the financial sector due to security considerations (Informant III).

APIs as communicative practices

In addition to its interface role, API is considered a set of communicative protocols shared among the software developers in the partnered companies. The shared protocols are fundamental for the shared understanding of how new software functions could be developed through collaborations. As Informant III vividly described:

We can imagine API as a table with columns and rows shared by the two companies collaborating on a project. They need to communicate with each other on how to collaborate. API is a table that Company A designed and asked Company B to fill in. Company A needs to make sure the descriptions of the table items are clear and concise so that B understands what to fill in each of the blanks in the same way as A comprehends. Once the two parties agree on the design and the filled content of the table, this table will be finalized as a format. In real work, this format exists in the form of a bunch of codes. The software engineers of Company A will encode this format, and the codes will be shared with the software engineers of Company B. B will develop new codes according to the same format so that the new codes can be integrated seamlessly.

Such protocols have several features favored by software developers. Some features are mentioned when Informant II and Informant III analyzed Alipay+ or use Alipay+ to exemplify particular features. First, API needs to be a set of straightforward codes so the software developers at partnered companies can easily understand and apply them. Second, it is easy to develop. For partner companies, very capable (in terms of realizing a function) APIs also get abandoned if they are too complex. Such APIs usually take a longer time for the partner developers to write the codes and systemize them. Third, partner companies would like the APIs to be replicable. Software developers often like the kind of APIs that can be used for various functions, as multifunctional APIs will save them time when writing new codes, thus making the development of payment functions faster and more efficient.

API as products and services

While Alipay has advanced in programming the interfaces and developing communication standards, it then strategically turns these technological advancements into part of Aliapy+'s products and services offered to partnered companies (with or without charge, depending on the nature of the partnership or collaborations), significantly extending its platform power. By providing standardized, scalable APIs for functions such as payment processing, identity verification, and transaction tracking, Alipay+ enables seamless integration with local financial service providers. These APIs are not merely technical tools; they serve as infrastructural offerings that embed Alipay's logic into partner platforms, reinforcing its role as an orchestrator of digital financial ecosystems. Through this model, Alipay externalizes its technological architecture while internalizing data flows, customer access, and operational control. In doing so, it consolidates its influence across diverse markets, particularly in East and Southeast Asia, where local platforms adopt Alipay's APIs to access globalized financial networks.

APIs and sociotechnical enveloping

This section elaborates on how the three-layered role of APIs allows Alipay+ to envelop other partnered platforms but also operationalizes the sociotechnical processes through which Alipay+, as well as the partnered platforms, extend their reach, embed themselves into existing infrastructures, and reshape transnational financial ecosystems. As Informant VII witnessed, the Alipay company has developed extremely efficient APIs for domestic payments and transactions through the Alipay app. He once worked for an international payment tech service provider, and in his words, “In the Chinese payment businesses, if you can get integrated with Alipay, you don’t need to worry about integration with all the other payment apps.”

Based on these experiences, Alipay+ was able to develop new APIs for CBP and transactions quickly. Also, Alipay's technological strengths cultivated in the platformization in the domestic context have put the company in a leading position that will define the APIs, or coding protocols for extended platformization in the global context. In fact, “almost every country has a dominant payment platform, and they can easily get integrated with each other based on their shared understanding of APIs. Many of them offer open APIs for easier integrations.” In this sense, APIs have become the nodes for Alipay+ to network with the payment platforms in other countries.

In addition, the platformization of the global payment network is also subject to market and social factors, such as foreign currency exchange rates and international monetary policies. The platform design must consider these social factors, particularly how to set APIs accordingly. In this sense, API is a kind of geopolitical interface mediating, but more importantly, hedging the risks brought about by policy shifts or market changes. As Informant III mentioned, “when writing APIs, software developers must think about how to complete the actual settlement with the local merchants because you might have to bear the risk of exchange rate fluctuations, which is the most complicated part of cross-border transactions.”

API interfaces can be either public or proprietary. When enormous companies like Apple or Google release a set of APIs, they typically accompany them with a series of terms and conditions that partners generally choose to abide by. However, smaller enterprises with less influence may find themselves needing to engage in cumbersome negotiations with potential partners one by one (as informed by Informant III). For Alipay+, “Rules and Standards” require log-in credentials that can only be assigned to business partners and need to be approved by Alipay. The consolidation of rules and standards is also a key recipe that allows Alipay+ to integrate with other payment platforms. In the context of CBPs, typical foundational services offered by financial institutions involve “account-exchange-payment” processes. Traditionally, these services are scattered across various departments and lines of business within commercial banks. This leads to significant disparities in business processes, technological features, and levels of informatization and automation. Even within a single bank, the systems responsible for these core services often lack seamless communication and are unable to provide unified standard API. Alipay+ has established a standardized internal communication protocol to integrate various models, thereby forming a unified external interface. This interface is open to developers using internationally recognized financial information protocols like the FIX protocol standard or encapsulated as data components such as JSON or XML (as informed by Informant I). As a result, end-users can access applications for various foundational modules through a single standardized interface provided by Alipay+. Standardization and consolidation have even paved the way for Robotic Process Automation, which can make the CBP business more efficient.

As illustrated in the API docs, the payment process will involve four groups of key players: Merchant, ASP, Mobile Payment Provider, and Alipay+. In everyday life, payment via Alipay seems a very simple and swift practice: the consumer scans the payment code provided by Alipay+, and the merchant will receive the money in their bank account in no time. However, the informational work that enables this payment is exceptionally complicated. It involves 18 communications among the four groups of players (see specific information flows in Appendix III). Consolidation has been Alipay+'s value proposition: When a merchant installs Alipay+, then the merchant's customers can pay for goods and services with any of the participating wallets in the ecosystem instead of having to ensure operability with the wallets one by one.

This trend has been welcomed by the global CBP businesses and policymakers. Singapore, for instance, has actively participated in initiatives like the Global Financial Innovation Network and the API Exchange—the latter being the world's first cross-border API platform designed to foster interregional financial collaboration. The Alipay company has utilized its strengths in APIs to integrate or partner with the payment platforms in other countries, thus enabling the new platform of Alipay+. Furthermore, the CBP ecosystem is operationalized and maintained through the communicative portals defined by Alipay+. The process of sociotechnical enveloping, driven by powerful APIs, signifies the new mode of platformization in the global financial context.

Conclusion

The rapid advancement of digital technologies and evolving policy landscapes in China have embedded its CBP sector into the global financial systems (Wang, 2025). This article zooms in on this trend and examines the dynamics of such developments at the meso and micro levels. Focusing on the case of Alipay+, it introduces the concept of sociotechnical enveloping to demonstrate how dominant platforms integrate local payment systems in emerging markets. It is a dynamic process driving unending platform expansion by both technical and social forces. This process is hinged on the versatile role of APIs, which serve not only as interfaces for enhanced interoperability but also as robust communication protocols and products and services to fulfill infrastructural absorption and ecosystem-level control. This perspective reveals the nuanced processes of platform evolution and ceaseless expansion, highlighting the role of APIs as key instruments of power.

To map out the sociotechnical enveloping process in the case of Alipay+, this research first identifies key technical concepts, such as codebase, modules, APIs, and enveloping, that form the foundation of platform ecosystems. Then, it analyzes how APIs function as powerful communicative infrastructures in Alipay+'s sociotechnical enveloping strategies. These interfaces facilitate sustained, multichannel exchanges between stakeholders—developers, compliance officers, partner institutions—across both online and offline contexts. Communication occurs in multiple registers, from highly formalized programming syntax to more flexible, human-centered negotiations, allowing technical integration and business alignment to proceed in tandem. In the CBP sector, where platform growth depends on building trust and achieving operational compatibility across diverse legal, linguistic, and technological environments, this communicative capacity of APIs is central. It ensures that integration is not merely a back-end technical task but a continuous process of relationship management, negotiation, and alignment that strengthens Alipay+'s ability to envelop emerging platforms.

Alongside these communicative dynamics, Alipay+'s expansion is propelled by the productization of APIs, transforming them from mere integration tools into modular products and services that partner platforms can adopt to extend their own reach. This productization serves as a business growth lever, especially in a sector where domestic market saturation pushes dominant players to seek international opportunities. The willingness of many partner countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, to integrate into global digital economies, often prioritizing innovation and economic growth over strict data governance or technological sovereignty, further accelerates adoption. Crucially, these strategies are reinforced by supportive policy environments: an increasingly permissive international licensing regime for CBP providers and explicit backing from the Chinese government, which views Alipay's overseas presence as strategically aligned with its broader e-commerce ambitions. Together, API’ technological affordance, its communicative power, Alipay's strategies of productizing APIs, and policy support collectively constitute the sociotechnical enveloping process, which creates the material and institutional conditions for Alipay+ to consolidate its position in the global payments ecosystem.

Although this article focuses on the sociotechnical dynamics of Alipay+, it is generalizable in understanding the mainstream CBP platforms based in the United States, such as Plaid, Apigee, and Yodlee, in terms of the three-layered role of APIs, which not only shape platforms’ architecture but also facilitate their continual evolution and expansion. Whether Alipay+ can turn a profit or establish a consolidated payment platform on an international scale remains to be seen. From the insights of multiple interviewees (informed by Informant VI and VII), it appears that Alipay+'s success in business is quite challenging, mainly due to the minimal profit yet to be shared with local partner payment platforms. However, as a research object, Alipay+ provides us with a valuable case to envision the future trend of platformization.

In a nutshell, the case of Alipay+ illustrates how sociotechnical enveloping, hinged on the sophisticated and multifaceted role of APIs, is reshaping the landscape of CBPs. Far from being mere technical connectors, APIs, especially when productized, serve as strategic assets that enable dominant platforms to integrate, align with, and ultimately subsume partner platforms across borders. This dynamic has gained particular traction in digital economies, where CBP flows have been concentrated since 2015. Within such contexts, the productization of APIs not only accelerates Alipay+'s transnational reach but also embeds its platform logic deeply into the financial infrastructures of partner nations. In this way, sociotechnical enveloping, powered by the strategic productization of APIs, emerges not merely as a growth tactic for Alipay+, but as a blueprint for how platform power embeds itself within the very architecture of global finance.