Tencentโs WeChat Pay, one of Chinaโs major mobile payment services, announced today that international credit cards are now allowed on the mobile payment platform. Expats living in China and residents of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwanโplaces where WeChat is ambitiously expanding its user baseโcan now bind and activate WeChat Pay accounts with credit card services provided by MasterCard, Visa, and JCB.
Itโs worth noting that this is the first time users are able to use WeChat Pay without having a Chinese bank account or credit card, according to a company statement from Tencent.
As China is going cashless, WeChat Pay and Alipayโa mobile payment service under Alibabaโs financial arm Ant Financialโhave become ubiquitous and embedded in all kinds of daily consumption settings, such as online shopping, ride-hailing, ticket purchasing, bike renting, food delivery, and hotel booking.
Released in August 2013, WeChat Pay has expanded to 25 countries around the world, serving the large amount of Chinese tourists traveling abroad. โWeChat is initially a social app,โ Grace Yin, Director of WeChat Pay Cross-border Operation at Tencent, told TechNode last week in Guangzhou. โIf [local users] donโt have experience using WeChat, then we cannot ask them to establish WeChat payment,โ she said.
In fact, WeChat Pay is popular among the expats living in China. According to a data report released by Tencent last year, over 64% of foreign expats in China used WeChat Pay for their daily needs. Itโs fair to say that most people (including the TechNode team) donโt need to leave their house with their wallet any longer.
