That’s almost 90% of mobile devices used by Chinese consumers. The only thing a user needs to do is connect a bank account to use the service.Īs it’s a part of WeChat, WeChat Pay supports all devices that work with WeChat. A growing number of companies are also taking advantage of another feature of this platform by building WeChat Mini Programs to venture into e-commerce.īasically, the top reason for businesses entering the Chinese market to integrate WeChat Pay is its huge user base: every WeChat user, of which there’s soon to be a billion, has access to WeChat Pay by default, as it comes with the WeChat app. WeChat is a whole ecosystem: a messenger, a social network, games. The reason for the latter is quite simple - almost everyone in China uses the WeChat messenger, which is more than just a messenger. WeChat Pay is the youngest of China’s top mobile payment apps, and it’s also the one with the most registered users. How do they differ and how can you choose the one that best suits your business? Let’s find out. For example, in UNIGHT, we integrated Alipay and WeChat Pay but not UnionPay.
And those differences may sway you toward one or two of them, not all three. However, at the same time, these three companies have their differences. But that’s a general recommendation sprouting from the fact that Alipay, WeChat Pay, and UnionPay all have similar offerings and only partially share the same audiences. This way, you’ll cover 100% of shoppers, or very close to it. The three most popular online payment systems in China are:īefore we start, here’s our very first piece of advice: In a totally perfect scenario, we’d recommend integrating all three of these systems. And as we’ve done our share of research into China’s e-market for the UNIGHT app, we know quite a bit about them. The top three payment gateways in China are also those that work best with foreign companies.
However, upon closer inspection, you’ll find that not all of them are equally popular, and few are friendly to foreign companies entering the Chinese market. In China, payment services are numerous and varied, which can make things a bit confusing for companies new to the Chinese mobile payment market. Chinese payment system integrations for foreign companies Here’s our guide to integrating Chinese payment gateways. Now let’s narrow our focus to one of the world’s largest markets and look at what there is to choose from. We’ve already covered the three most popular payment systems in the world in our article comparing Stripe, PayPal, and Braintree. There are a number of Chinese payment gateways you can implement, and if you want to be successful in the Chinese market, you need to choose the right one.
It’s not that people don’t use them at all (they do) it’s just that they mostly prefer local payment methods, many of which not only accept online payments but work offline with QR codes. Well, Chinese consumers don’t really like payment gateways like PayPal that we’re used to in the West. But one of the stumbling blocks on this path is Chinese mobile payment systems. Unsurprisingly, many overseas companies would love to take advantage of that.
According to Statista, this number is expected to reach 1 billion by 2023.
As of the beginning of 2019, more than 54% of Chinese shoppers were using third-party payment services the other 46% were divided almost equally between debit/credit cards and cash payments.Ĭhina has almost 650 million online shoppers.