Ingenico Partners With Alipay, WeChat Pay To Enable Mobile Payments In China

Global payments firm Ingenico Group is launching a suite of payment methods to help eCommerce firms operating in China, the company announced in a press release on Thursday (Oct. 10).

Ingenico noted that 82 percent of people in China use some type of mobile device. To better serve them, Ingenico has teamed up with Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay.

Ingenico is among the first global payment service providers (PSP) that fully integrates with all aspects of WeChat Pay, allowing its 1.1 billion users to do everything without leaving the WeChat ecosystem.

“Our long-time presence and activity in China means that we are perfectly positioned to partner with merchants wanting to access the truly local consumer market. Our expertise here, combined with this new set of payment capabilities, will allow international merchants to reach Chinese consumers that were previously difficult to access,” said Gabriel de Montessus, SVP Global Online (Retail BU) for Ingenico Group.

“Our merchants will be able to offer all the relevant local Chinese payment methods in local currency denomination as part of their digital experience, which will help increase conversion,” he added.

Ingenico also has an upgraded Alipay integration to help businesses reach key customers and get real-time payments.

UnionPay’s (UPI) SecurePay and ExpressPay solutions are also supported by Ingenico. Retailers can also offer Chinese Yuan (CNY) to customers by using Ingenico.

China is the world’s largest eCommerce market and has a 57 percent internet penetration rate, which represents 25 percent of global internet users, Ingenico said. It is also a unique market that requires tailored solutions.

In July, Ingenico launched TravelHub to connect travel companies with end-to-end payment processing across Asia, Latin America and Europe.

With TravelHub, travel companies can access more than 150 payment methods with smart transaction routing capabilities intended to improve conversion rates.

Ingenico’s TravelHub will integrate with the leading airline global distribution systems (GDS) and hotels’ property management systems (PMS). A direct connection to global payment capabilities will also be offered.