With immediate effect, the gateway offers direct links to China UnionPay (CUP), one of the world's largest credit and debit card organisations, and to the CUP subsidiary ChinaPay, the also internationally well-known CUP card acquirer. Consequently, payment service providers and their merchants in the USA, Europe and other parts of the world now get easy technical access to the principal payment procedures of the world's second largest economy with annual disposable income totalling EUR 290 billion and over 145 million active Chinese online shoppers. Full details of PayPipe can be found at www.paypipe.com

With integration of China CUP and ChinaPay into PayPipe, PAY.ON has opened the gate for payment providers to monthly several million cross border transactions by CUP card customers. PAY.ON comprehensively meets the various technical requirements of all market participants. Payment service providers (PSPs) and independent sales organisations (ISOs) are linked to both Chinese market leaders via a simple PayPipe integration for global transaction processing. PAY.ON provides also a dedicated link to China UnionPay for acquiring banks and acquiring processors complying to all necessary technical and formal requirements.

The high degree of relevance of cross-border e-commerce in China is also demonstrated by the CUP expansion strategy. To boost the international attractiveness of its payment methods, CUP currently allows PSPs and ISOs to become also a CUP acquirer itself in case of their merchant portfolio is sufficiently promising - which is usually an exclusive privilege of financial institutes. In the course of this transactions can be processed easily via PayPipe. PAY.ON complements the new China connection with a comprehensive on-site support. PAY.ON has its own operation in Asia since 2009 including account management and customer services with well-established relations to all market players in the Asia/Pacific region. "PAY.ON stands for fast and smooth execution of customer requirements," says Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani, Managing Director of PAY.ON Asia. "Thanks to our wide network of deep contacts with decision-makers, for example at operations like CUP and ChinaPay, customers are able to drive their APAC strategy forward even faster."

PayPipe offers payment providers the opportunity to connect their payment system with the processing platforms of several hundred other payment providers and more than 100 international payment method providers via only one single interface (API). The result is a significant technical simplification in global transaction handling, which is accompanied by considerable cost savings. Relevant payment partners not yet integrated into the PayPipe network such as payment service providers, acquirers, payment method providers and other financial institutions will be implemented into the routing gateway by PAY.ON on a short-term basis.

Regarding processing infrastructure, PAY.ON operates one of the most state-of-the-art data centres in the payment industry, which meets highest standards in terms of high availability, productivity and operating continuity. The same applies to the security concept meeting all the requirements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS v2). The data centre itself is also ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified. The set-up of the data centre is completely maintenance free and due to state-of-the-art virtualisation seamless and freely scaleable. London as the data centre location, with its direct and thus uninterrupted connection to the world´s high-speed data highways to all continents, also offers best performance conditions.