Get ready for China’s Golden Week - can you accept Alipay and UnionPay, the most popular payment methods in China?

Celebrations for Golden Week in China, kick off with a public holiday this year on the 1 October, known as China’s National Day.  Many Chinese families across the globe travel to visit family or to take a holiday.

This is also a time when the Chinese spend money on eating out, shopping, and purchasing presents for their loved ones. Here in the UK, spend during the week’s festivities has grown year-on-year and has become an important celebration across many parts of the country.

UnionPay advises that travel, food and shopping make up the largest share of cardholder spend, with many cardholders sharing their experiences online for others to see.

It was reported that 7 million outbound Chinese tourists travelled in 2018, so the ability to capture Chinese tourists’ spend is forever growing.  source: Union Pay newsroom: Merchants worldwide optimise UnionPay services during Golden Week to enhance Chinese tourists’ experience.

Golden Week 2018 alone, saw Chinese shoppers spending more money in the UK than any other country in Western Europe, capturing 15% of Chinese spend across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  Alipay reported a 3.5 times increase in transaction volumes that week compared to a normal trading week. Chinese shoppers using Alipay in the UK spent on average £281, compared to the global average of £220.

How can Global Payments assist in capturing Chinese spend during the week’s festivities?

1. Teaming up with Alipay, we offer a mobile app based transaction acquiring service, that enables a merchant to simply scan the Chinese Alipay wallet holder’s QR code on their phone to make a sale. The merchant simply downloads the Alipay merchant app, scans the walletholder’s QR code. Via wi-fi, Alipay authorises the transaction real-time with the walletholder’s account deducting the transaction amount immediately.
   
   
2. Why not consider accepting UnionPay if you don’t already. It’s accepted at over 25 million locations globally. Like any other credit card, UnionPay card is authenticated and authorised by the card issuer, and if your card acceptance terminal is managed by us, let us know and we will do the rest.

Bicester Village is the number one Chinese tourist destination when visiting the UK, after Buckingham Palace. Shopping at Bicester Village and its designer outlet stores during Golden Week is a must for any Chinese tourist. The average spend at the Village by Chinese tourists during last year’s Golden Week, was more than 50 percent higher than it was in the UK as a whole.  Again this year, our customers in Bicester Village and across the UK are gearing up to take advantage of the Chinese Golden Week celebrations.

Wishing all our merchants and their customers a very happy Chinese Golden Week.