WeChat Pay zeros on Chinese tourists

WeChat will not add local portfolios to markets outside of China, preferring to focus on tourists. Source: Shutterstock

Chinese tech giant Tencent was no longer going to add local mobile wallets to outside China in the next three years, preferring to focus on outbound tourists.

WeChat Pay is a payment service built into the popular WeChat country chat application. Outside mainland China, WeChat Pay currently serves local digital portfolios in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Currently, WeChat Pay and rival Alipay dominate the mobile payments landscape in China, taking a 90% market share.

South China's Morning Post (SCMP) Grace Yin, director of international operations of WeChat Pay said, "We do not have many WeChat users in countries in addition to -mer, we should accept that it will be difficult to develop payment tools. A Yin explained that Tencent is focusing on the construction of payment infrastructure in these markets, to allow Chinese tourists to pay goods and services seamlessly, as well as for local merchants to receive payments.

Currently, WeChat's salary is already available in more than 40 counties in 13 currencies. According to Yin, more than 800 million users have linked their bank accounts or credit cards to the service.

WeChat's expansion plan seems to follow in Alipay's footsteps. The company has targeted its initial deployment in Hong Kong, Macao, South Korea, Japan and Thailand.

"WeChat Pay will then seek rapid adoption in European countries, the United States, Australia and New Zealand". 19659006] This movement is hardly surprising. There are currently only 70 million users of WeChat abroad. For the context, WeChat has more than one billion users.

A joint report by China Tourism Academy and Ctrip's online travel service notes that Chinese travelers account for more than 130 million outbound trips in 2017. They spent $ 115 billion during the year, Thailand, Japan and Singapore were the most popular destinations.

Alipay, the payment subsidiary of Ant Financial Services Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba, is also highly developed in Europe and North America.

The latest addition for Alipay is Boston and London. In Boston, tourists can pay in a variety of grocery stores, food chain, retailers, as well as book rides with the mobile wallet. In London, Alipay has partnered with travel company Merlin Entertainment to enable the payment of popular tourist attractions owned by the company.