Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has vowed to cooperate with Tianjin to make the municipality a “cashless city”—the first of its kind in northern China.

The cooperation plan was unveiled at a June 28 meeting between Tianjin officials and Alibaba Group’s executives, prior to the 2017 World Intelligence Congress, which will be held from June 29 to 30 in the city.

Li Hongzhong, Tianjin’s Party chief, said the plan would significantly boost Tianjin’s “smart city” construction, and he hopes Alibaba will view the city as strategically important in the group's future development plans. Li added that Tianjin, the largest coastal city in northern China, holds profound technological and human resources for smart industry development.

Alibaba's Jack Ma said the group's pledge to build Tianjin into a “cashless city” is part of their goal to further integrate with the coordinated development plan of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. He said Alibaba would strengthen investment in Tianjin in several aspects, including finance, cloud computing, logistics, and cross-border imports, vowing to build Tianjin into a major data port in northern China.

On June 28, Fujian’s Fuzhou City also announced that it will become cashless with Alibaba’s cooperation. After Fuzhou and Tianjin, China will have a total of four “cashless cities,” after the cities of Hangzhou and Wuhan were crowned as cashless thanks to Alibaba’s Alipay service, which allows payments via mobile phone.