On Thursday, October 10, 2019, international payment services provider Ingenico announced its plan to open up the mobile payment processing market in China to the world through several unprecedented business partnerships. Ingenico has decided to focus in-country on China’s local e-commerce and mobile payment systems: It has partnered with bank card services provider UnionPay and Alipay and WeChat Pay, which are two of China’s top app platforms that utilize mobile payment systems.
Why Pick China?
China’s internet user population represents a quarter of all internet users worldwide. China also has a huge e-commerce market, the largest in the world, that grows by leaps and bounds every year because of online retail sales. A large part of China’s population uses convenient mobile and online options to fulfill their shopping needs. Mobile tech users alone make up 82 percent of the population and primarily use apps for offline and online payments. Whether shopping in a brick-and-mortar store or online, consumers typically use Alipay for all of their purchases. Additionally, the WeChat app is used for a wide mix of reasons by approximately 1.1 billion users daily. China is also one of the leading countries for creating new and successful offline and online consumer engagement strategies. As a result, mobile shoppers in the country connect quickly to brands through a variety of apps.
How Do Merchants Benefit?
Merchants from outside of China have traditionally found it difficult to operate in-country through China’s e-commerce systems because of the differences in platforms and the dominance of local payment solutions. Ingenico’s announcement means that international merchants will increasingly gain access to China’s mobile consumer population. Merchants will have the ability to accept real-time payments from mobile and desktop devices through UnionPay support and Alipay upgrades. Ingenico also plans to offer a full range of currency conversion options that make it possible for merchants to accept Chinese Yuan as payment. Through the WeChat text and voice messaging service, Ingenico will provide full support so that local WeChat users can make purchases from businesses without leaving the app. WeChat Pay support will extend to both official accounts and advanced sub-applications known as mini-programs. No other payment services provider currently offers this option on a global scale.
At Host Merchant Services, we stay on top of changes in the payment processing industry to provide the newest and best business opportunities to our clients. We will continue to keep an eye on this and other Ingenico developments and publish updates as they become available. For answers to any questions that you might have about this specific announcement or our payment processing services, contact us today.
