Barclaycard brings Alipay payments to UK retailers
Barclaycard, which processes nearly half of the UK’s credit and debit card transactions, has partnered with Alipay to allow retailers to accept Alipay transactions in stores across the UK.
VisitBritain is expecting 483,000 visits from China in 2019
This follows a pilot over the past two years, and will enable UK retailers to accept payments from Chinese visitors. In addition to the UK’s 393,000 Chinese residents and 95,000 Chinese students, tourists from China represent an “increasingly important” customer segment for retailers.
“Through this strategic partnership, Alipay will now be able to offer many more UK merchants the opportunity to connect and engage with a growing number of Chinese visitors,” Roland Palmer, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alipay. “This is another step forwards in our vision to offer Chinese tourists a seamless travel and payment experience when travelling overseas.”
VisitBritain is expecting 483,000 visits from China in 2019, up 43% on 2017, with Chinese visitors expected to spend more than £1 billion this year, up 50%.
The increase in market size is also demonstrated by the fact that the number of Alipay users in the UK has doubled in the last year.
According to a 2018 survey conducted by Nielsen, the vast majority (93%) of Chinese tourists said they would likely spend more in a store that accepted mobile payments. Nearly 60% of merchants adopting Alipay said that they had clearly seen growth in both foot traffic and revenue.
UK retailers will be able to use the same point-of-sale system to accept in-store Alipay payments.
