Ningbo recently added an incentive for one-cent fares, and Guangzhou just added support for buses, per Coingeek. Similarly to Alipay, customers can pay in Chinese RMB, and the amount is then settled in the vendor’s account in their currency of choice.

New use cases and incentives could change that-for example, 10 cities now accept the e-CNY for subway fare. To take advantage of one of the most convenient payment methods in China, you should set up WeChat pay. For online vendors, WeChat offers businesses the ability to accept WeChat Pay, but only in Mainland China, Hong Kong and South Africa in 2019.

It is designed mainly to be used for high-frequency, small-scale retail purchases and transactions. It is issued by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

But interest is lukewarm: Both Alipay and WeChat Pay have higher favorability ratings, and many users see no need to switch. The digital yuan, officially called the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC/EP), is a digitised version of China’s legal currency, the renminbi (RMB).

WeChat pay service provider is a great social community for users all.

That might draw customers to the digital yuan (e-CNY): The government reported 261 million enrollees, and 1 in 5 adults in China have downloaded the official e-CNY app, per Morning Consult. Wechat online payment gateway is the most popular Chinese instant messaging application.

But Beijing has been cracking down on Big Tech, which could make apps harder to use and less appealing to customers. The bigger picture: Pressure on major mobile wallets is building.Ĭhina’s mobile payments market is highly mature: Nearly 8 in 10 mobile phone users make both proximity and peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payments, mostly through Alipay and WeChat Pay. New regulations from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) are meant to change that: If more than 20% of a bank’s cards have no transactions or overdraft for 18 months, they’ll have to pause issuance.Ĭredit card withdrawals could be a boon both to banks-which find themselves disintermediated by digital wallets-and to UnionPay, which holds a near monopoly in China’s card market, by increasing card use. Earlier this year, state media reported that WeChat Pay was only available in 20 different countries and regions (excluding mainland China).

Once they enter their payment information into the WeChat app, they can pay bills, make peer-to-peer money transfers, and pay for items online and in-store wherever merchants accept WeChat Pay. And use has stagnated at about 40%, per Daxue Consulting. WeChat Pay is linked to users’ Chinese bank accounts and/or Visa, MasterCard, or JCB cards. Chinese credit cards per capita hover around 0.53-lower than other developed markets, per Huaon.What it means:On its face, the move is designed to improve credit card use in the market after new regulations came into play.

Wechat pay chinachina