UnionPay Comes To North America With Merchants Now Accepting QuickPass In Canada

UnionPay International announced on Tuesday (Aug. 16) that several daily-spending merchants in Canada will start accepting UnionPay mobile QuickPass, marking the debut of the service in North America. Before its entrance into Canada, UnionPay mobile QuickPass was accepted at over 220,000 POS terminals in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia.

In a press release, UnionPay International said the merchants that are now accepting mobile QuickPass are largely restaurants, hotels, retail outlets, supermarkets and convenient stores. Consumers can pay with their UnionPay QuickPass chip cards or mobile QuickPass-enabled smartphones at the contactless terminals in these merchants. If the customer is paying less than C$100, there is no signature required when paying with a UnionPay debit card. No PIN or signature is required when paying less than C$100 using a UnionPay credit card. The company said it is in accordance with international practice to set a cap on micropayment for contactless payment, and it helps ensure card-using security.

“Over 85 percent of the local ATMs and more than 70,000 merchants accept UnionPay cards, and dozens of the local educational institutions support cross-border online tuition payment via UnionPay cards,” the company said in the press release. “Now, UnionPay cards are accepted both online and offline in Canada.”

Based on the most recent data available, UnionPay said over 2 billion UnionPay chip cards have been issued worldwide, and over 7 million point-of-sale terminals around the globe support mobile QuickPass. Australia has the largest number of QuickPass-accepting terminals, and in Macau, UnionPay is the most widely used international payment brand in terms of contactless payment, the company said.

In May, Visa struck a new deal with UnionPay through a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on three key areas in the financial ecosystem: payments security, innovation and financial inclusion. The deal, which was signed by Shi Wenchao, president of China UnionPay, and Visa CEO Charlie Scharf, aims to provide a platform for the two payments networks to come together to “strengthen and create new value for the bank card ecosystem benefiting consumers, merchants, financial institutions and technology partners,” according to a release.