Eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH has entered into a new agreement to offer WeChat Pay processing facilities at its Munich Airport shops, where airport management says Chinese customers are becoming increasingly important to its top-end brand partners.

 

Eurotrade is a wholly-owned retail subsidiary of Flughafen München GmbH and will now become Germany’s first retailer to accept WeChat Pay after integrating the separate Alipay system into its till systems back in July 2016.

 

2M CHINESE A YEAR VISIT GERMANY

There are already more than two million Chinese tourists a year who visit Germany and in the last year under review, this visitor nationality spent an estimated $292bn when travelling in foreign countries, with a very large proportion of this expenditure on shopping.

 

 

Eurotrade says it has already witnessed positive results after introducing Alipay, just as average spend by Chinese tourists has risen by 92% in the three months since the launch of the new payment system. At the same time visitors from China have spent around 280% more than average consumers in the airport retailer’s duty free shops.

 

‘EASY DECISION’ TO OFFER WECHAT PAY

Sven Zahn, Managing Director of eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH commented: “It was pretty easy to make the decision to also offer WeChat Pay as a new payment method because of the excellent results we’ve seen with Alipay.

 

“In addition, Chinese visitors plan their trips to Europe, including shopping lists far in advance. This is why it is important for us to also use the marketing platforms that mobile payment apps offer us. Following Alipay, the adoption of WeChat Pay highlights our commitment to offering a holistic payment service for international visitors in general and for Chinese visitors more specifically.”

 

 

WECHAT PAY HAS 600M USERS A MONTH… AND COUNTING

Christian Reindl, Executive Vice President Sales Consumer Goods at Wirecard commented: “As one of the first WeChat Pay partners for POS acceptance in Europe, we are proud to be expanding our collaboration with eurotrade Flughafen München Handels-GmbH. Thanks to our flexible payment platform, we have been able to achieve this quickly and easily.”

 

The company adds that WeChat Pay – as part of the Chinese company Tencent – now has more than 600m active users a month and ranks among the top five internet companies worldwide.

 

It also claims a market share of almost 40% in terms of payment volumes and around 53% for mobile payment transactions in China [according to iResearch data on the company relating to the third quarter 2017-Ed].