As Apple cautiously establishes a foothold in China for the eventual rollout of Apple Pay there, other international payments services are already finding China to be one of their biggest markets, Chinese tech blog TechNode reported.
Their primary merchants: Online gaming companies, which represent one of the top revenue-generating online business sectors, and one of the first to enter overseas markets.
The outside payments processors have gained traction in China in different ways. OKPay, a European Bitcoin company, now says 20 percent of its customers are from China, and has launched the Chinese version of its services and hired Chinese customer service representatives, but doesn’t yet have an office in China. The company hopes to eventually support Chinese online retailers who export goods to markets where OKPay has a strong presence.
Fortumo, an Estonian company that’s focused on carrier billing, set up an office in China last year. The company has a package of offerings tailored for Chinese mobile developers, ranging from language translation services to app/content distribution in different markets.
San Francisco-based Paymentwall, which has integrated more than 120 payments options (including Alibaba’s Alipay), is also preparing to open an office in Beijing. Like OKPay, it plans to expand from its current gaming-company merchant base to physical-goods retailers. But Paymentwall has also managed to sign gaming companies that are unlikely to enter overseas markets, so it is establishing a genuinely domestic Chinese business.
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