A Report of WeChat Non-cash oversea travelling of International Workers’ Day Holiday(1st May ~ 4th May)

By Kevin Wang(Target China)
10 March 2017

The first of May as “International Workers’ Day” brings the opportunity of all populations in China to a whole week holiday. Lots of Chinese travel to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and overseas during the holidays.

WeChat payment has become Chinese population’s main purchasing method. In developed cities approximately all businesses provide WeChat payment services, also know as Paylinx in Australia. WeChat payment can be quickly processed by all purchasing reasons including grocery shopping, taxi, take away and any other bills. This type of “Non-Cash Travel” has become the main trend in China mainland. This lead to other region and areas around China mainland willing to develop this way of payment method for population and tourist attraction purposes. Nowadays, not only Hong Kong and Taiwan but as well as Korea and Thailand’s focused tourist areas are also developing this method of WeChat Payment. This cross-border payment service by WeChat allows Chinese tourists to proceed payments using RMB with the current exchange rate which allows time-saving and resolve other inconvenient issues. This has made a great welcome from tourist and businesses in these areas.

Last day of “May First” holiday 2017, WeChat published ‘Non-cash out of border report’. This data supported by 889 million active users is calculated by the total average of Chinese consumer’s “Non-Cash” payment action in out of border areas during the “May First” holiday.

During the holiday period, Guangdong obtains the largest number of outbound tourism, followed by Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu. According to the report, the location most favoured by Guangdong tourists are Hong Kong, the majority of Shanghai tourist’s travel location is Japan with the shortest travelling distance, the majority of Beijing tourist travels to the United States and Zhejiang tourists travels to Italy.

Hong Kong at first place, Korea falling behind for the first time, Thailand achieving the fastest growth.

Cross-border WeChat payment consumption data shows that Hong Kong as the area where most consumption processed with cross-border WeChat payment exceeded Korea for the first time. Originally Korea as the usual first ranked country dropped to the second, due to American and South Korean military officials agreed to deploy the THAAD missile defence system in the country. Other countries ranked in the order of Thailand, Japan, Australia, China Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore. Among them, Thailand is the country with the fastest growth of Non-Cash payment frequency processed by the Chinese tourist, this is related to the growth of the number of Chinese tourists travelling to Thailand. This year, during the Chinese new year holiday period, Thailand’s number of transactions compared to the same period last year rose 104%. During the Songkran Festival in April, the number of transaction rose another 38% than the new year period which is six times of the same period from last year and during the “May First” holiday, this data again rose 10%. Nowadays all businesses including global duty-free shops, Chiang Mai and even Phuket’s street hawkers obtains the access to WeChat payment. Furthermore, Japan is also a Non-Cash destination favoured by Chinese tourists. The nuclear pollution heavily impacted on Japan’s tourism businesses, however, many Chinese consumers still maintain the choice to travel to Japan for travelling and shopping during Holiday periods.

Non-Cash payment becomes a cross-border trend, businesses uses WeChat payment to attract customers.

Hong Kong Sasa cosmetic shop is one of Hong Kong’s highest number WeChat payment transaction business during “May First” period and 70% of its customers are from China mainland. This is achieved by Sasa cosmetic activate WeChat payment application as well as release WeChat payment discount activities to attract Mainland tourists as WeChat payment is a usual consumption method from Mainland’s consumer.

Thailand’s largest king power duty free shops marketing manager Kuang Wei indicates that more Chinese tourists wishing to proceed purchases using WeChat payment, therefore, they accessed WeChat Payment last year for Chinese consumers to be able to experience the same convenient shopping environment as they do in China also will not need to worry about money exchange or other issues.

Currently, WeChat has been registered in 12 countries and regions, support 11 direct currency settlement and solves the issue of money exchange or other problems for Chinese tourists. Travel the world without a wallet as an action of “Non-Cash” has constantly become reality. WeChat Payment team indicates that cross-border businesses will follow the pace of Chinese tourists. From Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia as well as other neighbouring region and countries of tourism as the start, and gradually develop to the world.