As part of Tencent, the leading provider of Internet value added services in China, WeChat and Weixin are part of Chinese people’s daily life, and the combined monthly active users is over 938 million. The mobile payment solution, WeChat Pay, has over 600 million active users, that equivalent to nearly 40 percent market share of Chinese mobile payment market. With this collaboration, Wirecard aims to unlock this attractive market to European retailers.

China is an important tourism key source market for European countries, the average spending per Chinese tourist reaches EUR 3,000, the spending momentum is growing strong, especially on buying luxury products such as clothes, jewelry and watches, cosmetics and household goods with strong brand names. As the Chinese are generally more accustomed to mobile payments than to card payments, European retailers can drive their business even more attractive by offering Chinese visitors their preferred payment method.

Jörn Leogrande, Executive Vice President Mobile Services at Wirecard, said: “We are proud to be one of the first WeChat Pay partners for POS acceptance in Europe. This collaboration is an additional step for us to offer retailers a whole range of alternative and classical payment methods with just one interface where other payment methods can be added regularly. Thanks to our ConnectedPOS platform we are able to integrate them with minimal intervention in the existing cash register. We are looking forward to expand our business and to offer WeChat Pay for customers all over Europe.”

3 steps for Chinese visitors to enjoy cashless mobile payments in retail with WeChat Pay
1. Open WeChat or Weixin App and go to Wallet feature
2. Show the QR code on phone screen to retailer
3. Retailer scans the QR code to activate the payment process

During the payment process, Wirecard plays a role as the acquiring bank, and bundles all transactions for the respective retailer and processes together via the collecting model.