UnionPay Partners With Trip.com to Meet Travelers’ Payment Needs

UnionPay International (UPI) partnered with online travel agency (OTA) Trip.com to enhance the payment experience for UnionPay cardholders.

The collaboration will expand online acceptance and meet the payment needs of travelers in major markets, the companies said in a Friday (Dec. 15) press release.

The tie-up covers all major transaction currencies on Trip.com’s global sites that accept UnionPay online payment, according to the release. This includes Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The collaboration’s integration of the Hong Kong version of the UnionPay app enables transactions in Hong Kong dollars, per the release.

With operations in over 200 countries and regions, Trip.com offers a wide range of accommodation options with more than 1.2 million hotels and a flight network of over 2 million individual routes connecting over 5,000 cities globally, the release said.

UPI has card issuance in 79 countries and regions, per the release. In response to customers’ travel trends and needs, UPI continues to connect the global travel industry with payment services. This year, its airline and OTA traffic have increased by 81% and 153%, respectively.

The partnership with Trip.com expands online acceptance for over 200 million UnionPay cardholders outside mainland China, according to the release.

UnionPay surpassed the 200-million-card milestone in December 2022, as it was marking its 10th year in operation. The company added at the time that 38 million merchants outside of the Chinese mainland accept UnionPay cards.

In another partnership, UnionPay teamed up with FinTech company TripLink in October to introduce the UnionPay Virtual Commercial Card in Singapore. The collaboration aims to address the cross-border payment needs of businesses, particularly in the airline and hotel industries.

The card aims to meet the demands of the growing number of online transactions in the global travel and tourism sector, where two-thirds of the industry’s revenue came from online sales channels in 2022, UnionPay said at the time. The online travel market size worldwide was $475 billion in 2022 and is projected to more than double to over $1 trillion by 2030.