Macau (MNA) – WeChat Pay currently has no intention to apply for a local license to run cashless payment for Macau SAR residents, Grace Yin (pictured below), Director of WeChat Pay Cross-border Operation told the media on Tuesday.
“We will continue to focus more on local enterprises in Macau on providing WeChat Pay to customers, before we would consider to extend the service for Macau residents,” remarked Ms Yin.
WeChat Pay – one of the Chinese cashless payment giants – together with the Macau SAR Government and a few local technology developers held an event on Tuesday to introduce the payment method for local enterprises.
The technology firm acknowledges the continuous growth of expenditure by Chinese tourists in the MSAR, with last year’s total expenditure by visitors having reached some MOP61.32 billion, according to official data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC).
Yin indicated that the group would keep its current strategy of collaborating with local institutions, saying that they “welcome all institutions that could assist the provision of [cashless payment] service for enterprises.”
Payment via WeChat currently requires a customer to have a mainland China bank account and users must have their identification verified by providing identification documents to the service provider.
However, local enterprises can apply for an account at local banks ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) Macau and Tai Fung Bank to set up a machine that can provide WeChat payment service for their customers.
“I know that there are already a lot of mobile payment methods in Macau,” said the director. “We hope to collaborate with this companies since they know more about the market in Macau.”
She claimed that the group might consider to have colleagues visiting the city more frequently to promote and monitor related services.
Slower is safer
Asked about her opinions regarding the city’s pace of developing cashless payment, Ms. Yin said “it is more appropriate to slowly develop while ensuring the safety [of transactions].”
“Transactions’ safety is essential in operating [cashless payment] service,” noted the director.
She believed that the gradual introduction of cashless payment in local stores would help to reduce time and resources by educating local residents to recognise the convenience and reliability of the new payment method, ideally making more local customers to accept cashless payment methods offer by local developers.
Meanwhile, Ms. Yin commented that WeChat Pay promotion in the city is much easier when compared to other regions, in particular in America and the European countries, given that WeChat is already widely used by Macau residents.
“Most of [the people from America and Europe] have zero knowledge about using WeChat,” said Ms Yin, adding that it is “very difficult” to explain the many built-in functions of WeChat to foreign users.
Asked about the competition with Alipay, another major Chinese cashless payment service provider managed by Alibaba Group, Ms. Yin remarked that “competition is normal, without competition [business becomes] meaningless.”
“In China, we compete against Alipay but we are also cooperating with them in promoting cashless payment,” said Ms Yin. “For us, it is more about working hand-in-hand with Alipay and promote cashless payment.”
In 2017, the government inked an agreement with the Alibaba Group to develop a Smart City project for the MSAR, with a deadline being set to fulfil the two-phased project by 2021.
[Edited by Sheyla Zandonai]
