Wirecard has announced an agreement with Tencent’s WeChat Pay, one of the leading mobile payment solutions in China. WeChat or Weixin are deeply integrated into Chinese people’s daily life with a combined monthly active users of over 938 million. The mobile payment solution, WeChat Pay, has over 600 million active users, that equivalent to nearly 40 percent market share of Chinese mobile payment market. Wirecard said it aims to unlock this attractive market to European retailers.
Wirecard says China is an important tourism source market for Europe. The average spending per Chinese tourist is around €3,000. Chinese consumers are generally more accustomed to mobile payments than to card payments. Now European retailers can drive their business even more attractive by offering Chinese visitors their preferred payment method.
Jörn Leogrande, Executive Vice President Mobile Services at Wirecard, commented on the announcement;
“We are proud to be one of the first WeChat Pay partners for POS acceptance in Europe. This collaboration is an additional step for us to offer retailers a whole range of alternative and classical payment methods with just one interface where other payment methods can be added regularly. Thanks to our ConnectedPOS platform we are able to integrate them with minimal intervention in the existing cash register. We are looking forward to expand our business and to offer WeChat Pay for customers all over Europe.”
WeChat Pay will not have the European market to their own as Alipay, part of Alibaba, launched several years back. Of course rivals Apple Pay and other smaller providers are also established in the market but the transition from cards to mobile payments continues unabated.
