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HELSINKI, Sept. 1-- Finland's biggest chain of department stores Stockmann agreed on Friday to install China's Alipay as one of its payment methods. The move was considered a milestone for the Chinese mobile payment platform to be recognized in Europe. The first sale ever done through Alipay at a Stockmann cashier desk was operated on Friday morning by the giant retailer's chief commercial officer Anna Salmi, who sold a pair of glass mugs to Yin Wei, chief financial officer of Finnish mobile payment company ePassi, Alipay's partner in Finland. Yin spent a few seconds in scanning the barcode and confirming the payment before he took over the parcel from Salmi. "I hope this represents the future of payment method in Finland," he said. As Yin explained, the money will be transferred in the background from the customer's Alipay account to ePassi and further to Stockmann. Salmi said she was not surprised by the speed of the transaction, as she had seen it on internet before. What made her most excited was the fact that Alipay is much more than a payment method. "For us it is part of the deal to help the customers with pre-know -- what's here, what we offer, what services that we have, hopefully at some stages even open a dialogue box where customers can get service," Salmi told Xinhua. "It is about also managing the expectations, and getting those from the right level. (We) hopefully get some feedback as well through that channel. That will help us to develop our services to be more suitable for the Chinese tourists," she added. | 
