Mobile payment helps fuel holiday consumption

China’s innovative mobile payment options fuelled a new wave of inbound travel-related consumption during the National Day holiday, injecting more vitality into the global tourism industry, said industry experts.

Data from leading online payment platform Alipay showed that inbound visitors are increasingly embracing mobile payment methods while travelling across China, as their spending on the platform surged around 120 per cent year-on-year during the first four days of the weeklong holiday, from 1 October to 7 October.

The uptick in transactions was particularly pronounced among tourists from over 10 countries and regions that have been granted visa-free access to China since last year. Their Alipay usage saw a nearly threefold year-on-year increase, the platform said.

Meanwhile, Chinese businesses are also capitalising on the growing influx of international consumers. The number of merchants using Alipay for foreign customers doubled during the first four days of the holiday compared with the same period in 2023.

The top services that foreign tourists used through Alipay during this year’s National Day holiday were ride-hailing, bike-sharing, flight and train bookings, and food delivery.

Ouyang Rihui, assistant dean of the China Centre for Internet Economy Research at Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said that visa-free access, flight recovery and convenient mobile payments are among key factors driving the rise of inbound tourism in China.

“This will not only boost domestic consumption, but will also inject fresh impetus into the global tourism industry,” Ouyang added.

In a move to further facilitate transactions for foreigners, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the National Data Administration announced recently  that eight cities will pilot a programme designed to make it easier for individual business owners to adopt mobile payment platforms.

Individual businesses in cities including Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and Jinan in Shandong province will be supported in streamlining the procedure needed to handle payment codes for foreign credit cards, according to the two authorities.

They said that mobile payment platforms do not have access to the registration information of individual businesses and, therefore, the process of opening merchant payment codes was time-consuming.

The new move will make it easier for over 11 million individual business entities, which make up 9.3 per cent of the total national businesses, to open such codes, the authorities said.

The nation has been making greater efforts to facilitate payment for foreign visitors.

In March, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, released guidelines aimed at improving the accessibility of bank card payments, promoting the use of cash and expanding mobile payment options for travellers.

The Chinese mainland recorded an estimated 95 million trips made by foreign tourists in the first nine months of this year, up 55.4 per cent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Luigi Gambardella, president of ChinaEU, an international association promoting digital and high-tech cooperation between Chinese and European companies, said that China’s efforts to enhance mobile payment options for international users is a significant step forward.

“The transformation not only benefits individual travellers and merchants, but also strengthens China’s position as a world leader in the adoption of mobile payments and a major contributor to global advancement in fintech,” Gambardella said.