GUYS! I'm connecting dots here... Over in this thread: a potential Ripple/Alipay partnership is brewing. You know who else works with Alipay? Omise. You know who just tweeted on the 10th about an exciting partnership? OmiseGo. AliPay is working with Barclays, who we know uses Ripple and has been quoted as speaking to regulators about using digital currency - specifically "equivalent to bitcoin, not bitcoin."
OmiseGo would handle the merchant to Alipay transactions, Ripple would handle Alipay to bank transactions.