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UnionPay, a card services company, allows users to pay off their balance of dual-currency credit card at the time of their choosing, so consumers can wait for the most favorable exchange rate. This lack of flexibility may deter some consumers who want to take advantage of the best exchange rates. WeChat Pay completes transactions with an on-the-spot exchange rate provided by China Construction Bank or China Citic Bank, which means that consumers’ Chinese yuan would be converted into foreign currency at the current exchange rate. Though WeChat Pay has made great strides, there are still substantial barriers to its success. However, whether WeChat Pay can position itself as the best payment method for luxury brands is still determined by a single factor: it’s popularity among outbound Chinese tourists. Dior and Hermes also opened WeChat accounts earlier this year. Just this week, the digitally averse label Celine launched a brand account on WeChat. This feature is enticing to foreign luxury brands as they are eager to find a way to connect with Chinese consumers. By providing individualized service to buyers, Tencent believes that WeChat Pay can encourage shoppers to purchase again. It also has a feature to promote merchants’ products and promotions to active buyers within 48 hours after the purchase. According to, the third-party website authorized by Tencent to give helpful tips to marketers, WeChat Pay enables retailers to automatically add buyers to their WeChat brand account when they check out and scan the provided QR code. Although WeChat Pay hasn’t disclosed to the public how this is done in overseas markets, domestic practices provide some indication of how the practice would work. The draw of WeChat Pay to merchants is not simply the potential to encourage purchases, but also the opportunity to connect with WeChat’s 980 million monthly active users for promotional purposes.Īfter paying with WeChat Pay, users can then be prompted to follow the vendor’s WeChat account. Alipay accounted for 53.7 percent of total transaction volume and WeChat Pay accounted for 39.5 percent.
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China is the world’s largest mobile payments market with $138 billion in mobile payments transactions this year. Currently, transactions can be made in nine currencies.Įven though WeChat Pay is expanding and its market share increasing, it is still not the most popular mobile payments platform in China. Earlier this year, WeChat Pay announced a business venture in Japan and a push in Italy. The plan, according to BNP Paribas, is to expand WeChat Pay to other European retailers who partner with the bank. This is yet another move this year by Tencent to expand the use of WeChat Pay globally. How luxury brands might benefit from the payment platform remains to be seen. WeChat Pay is now accepted at two Parisian department stores of the Galeries Lafayette group, Galeries Lafayette Haussmann and BHV Marais, marking the mobile payment’s first implementation at physical retailers in Europe.