Wirecard, the international technology company, is expanding its collaboration with eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH, a subsidiary of Flughafen München GmbH, in point-of-sale (POS) payment processing in order to offer WeChat Pay at the Munich airport. As a wholly owned retail subsidiary of Flughafen München GmbH, eurotrade operates some 70 shops at Munich’s airport. The premium brand portfolio is also targeted towards Chinese customers. This target group is increasingly gaining importance. To cater to their needs, eurotrade will now become the first supplier in Germany to accept WeChat Pay after successfully integrating Alipay into its till systems in July 2016.
WeChat Pay has over 600 million active users per month and is part of the Chinese company Tencent, which ranks among the top five Internet companies worldwide. WeChat Pay has a market share of almost 40 percent in terms of payment volume and around 53 percent for mobile payment transactions in China. With the launch of WeChat Pay, eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH will appeal to a wide target group.
More than two million Chinese tourists travel to Germany annually and shop for renowned luxury brands. In 2015 alone, Chinese tourists spent USD 292 billion in foreign countries. The eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH can confirm that most of this spending is spent on shopping. The company has already seen positive results after introducing Alipay- in the first three months since the launch of the new payment method, the average amount spent by Chinese tourists in eurotrade stores has increased by 92 percent. Since then, visitors from China have spent around 280 percent more than average consumers in duty-free shops.
Sven Zahn, Managing Director of eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH, said: “It was pretty easy to make the decision to also offer WeChat Pay as a new payment method because of the excellent results we’ve seen with Alipay. In addition, Chinese visitors plan their trips to Europe, including shopping lists, far in advance. This is why it is important for us to also use the marketing platforms that mobile payment apps offer us. Following Alipay, the adoption of WeChat Pay highlight our commitment to offering a holistic payment service for international visitors in general, and for Chinese visitors more specifically.”
Christian Reindl, Executive Vice President Sales Consumer Goods at Wirecard, adds: “As the first WeChat Pay partner for POS acceptance in Europe, we are proud to be expanding our collaboration with eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH. Thanks to our flexible payment platform, we have been able to achieve this quickly and easily.”
Chinese visitors who want to make mobile cashless payments with WeChat Pay need to follow three simple steps: The user opens the WeChat or Weixin app and selects the item from the wallet feature. This creates a QR code. The retailer then scans this code to initiate the payment process. Meanwhile, Wirecard assumes payment acceptance and handles all processing.
