Many netizens expressed dissatisfaction on Twitter, but Chinese students and Chinese tourists began to take advantage of it because they had Alipay: Just took out their mobile phone and opened 'Alipay'. One-click payment was successful.
With the increase of Chinese consumer power in the global tourism market, American businesses have begun to notice this emerging emerging consumer power.
Recently, Forbes magazine said that if you want to attract Chinese tourists, then mobile payments represented by Alipay has become a must-have item for businesses.
According to statistics, China's tourism spending in 2016 has reached 261.1 billion U.S. dollars, with 21.4% of the market share leading the world. This can be seen as a 'gold rush' for the tourism industry. All businesses are deeply digging their own Advantages to attract more Chinese consumers.
In recent years, some leading travel brands have launched tourism services specifically for Chinese tourists, including providing Chinese service websites, hiring Chinese employees to provide native Chinese language services for tourists, establishing cooperative relationships with Chinese travel agents, and conducting public relations activities in China, etc. .
However, among these initiatives, there is a clear lack of connection with the most common payment methods in China. This is a problem that many US companies need to pay attention to.
Imagine if an American traveler couldn’t use a credit card when traveling. It would be a kind of embarrassing experience. If you need to be forced to accept other inconvenient or even payment methods that you do not like, you will not Do not hesitate to choose to replace the hotel or restaurant for consumption.
This is also the experience that most Chinese tourists cannot use in mobile payments in the US. According to the latest survey data from Nielsen and Alipay, 83% of Chinese tourists will ask whether they can use mobile payment methods such as Alipay while traveling overseas. 93% of visitors indicated that they would give priority to using mobile payment in overseas affairs.
It should be noted that China is shifting from traditional payment methods to mobile payments, and consumer spending behavior has also clearly changed.
Although in the United States, Apple Pay's penetration rate did not reach expectations, more than 35% of the 724 million Chinese smartphone users often use mobile payments, of which Alibaba Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat payment has 93% of the market. Share.
Assuming that most of these 724 million smartphone users overlap with China's wealthier consumers, then US companies that do not have access to mobile payments may lose the attraction of 254 million Chinese consumers.
These consumers are likely to be the main force for overseas travel in the next 10 years, and this figure is roughly equivalent to the total population of Indonesia.
Therefore, if Chinese consumers are target customers, why not attract a part of marketing expenses to attract customers in the payment process, instead of losing them? More importantly, if you act now, you will be able to surpass your competitors.
In recent years, the cooperation between U.S. companies and the China Mobile Payment Platform has become more and more close, and the access process has become more and more simple. Through cooperation with U.S. payment providers and other companies, China Mobile Payment represented by Alipay Companies are also expanding overseas markets. Therefore, certain brand access may be very simple, as long as they cooperate with Alipay suppliers and upgrade their payment terminals. Others may need to cooperate with third-party agencies.
It is worth noting that taking into account the development of overseas travel and mobile payments in China in the next decade, companies that are not actively operating may be lagging behind.
According to Nielsen statistics, 65% of Chinese tourists already use mobile payments on overseas trips, while 91% of Chinese tourists prefer to spend on mobile payments.
