Shops and restaurants in Macau which accept the Macau Pass contactless card can now apply to upgrade their terminals to enable support for Alipay mobile payments and China UnionPay Quick Pass cards... More
Alipay
McDonald’s to pilot mobile order and pay in China
McDonald’s is to begin piloting a mobile ordering and payment service in China in the third quarter of this year, with the aim of speeding payments and to meet consumer demand... More
Ant Financial valued at US$45bn
Chinese e-commerce giant Ant Financial has completed a Series A financing round that values the company at more than US$45bn and makes the Chinese government a stakeholder, New York Times reports... More
KFC China restaurants to accept Alipay mobile payments next month
Nearly 5,000 KFC China fast food restaurants will accept Alipay mobile payments next month, following in the footsteps of Walmart which is rolling out support for the service in all of its Chinese stores by the end of this year... More
Alibaba and Ant Financial invest nearly $1bn in Koubei mobile commerce platform
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Alipay parent Ant Financial have each invested RMB3bn (US$483m) into Koubei, a joint venture that will let consumers order and pay for local services in China using their smartphone, “with an initial focus on the food and beverage segment”... More
Walmart to accept Alipay mobile payments in China
Walmart is to begin accepting Alipay mobile payments at 25 stores in Shenzhen, China, and the service is to go live in all of the chain’s 410 stores across 160 Chinese cities by the end of this year... More
Alibaba checks in simple hotel booking
Hotel customers with high credit scores will be able to book rooms on Alibaba’s online travel booking platform Alitrip without having to provide their credit card for room deposits and bypass check-out with payments automatically deducted from their Alipay accounts... More
Alibaba boss demonstrates selfie payments
Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma has demonstrated a prototype biometric verification service that could enable a payment to be authorized by simply capturing an image of a mobile phone user’s face. More
Alipay extends fingerprint IDs
Alipay has extended its fingerprint log-in capability for the Alipay Wallet to iPhone users, China Daily reports... More
Alipay offers transport passes
Alipay is making it possible for Chinese tourists to purchase transport passes for Singapore, Thailand and Macau ahead of travel and then collect them by scanning a barcode on their mobile phones at booths and kiosks at their destination... More
CUP moves to block Alipay
China UnionPay (CUP), the country’s official card payments network, has issued notifications to its member banks to tell them “to avoid working with third-party payment services like Alipay”, Want China Times reports... More
A million consumers sign up for Apple Pay in first 72 hours
Apple Pay saw more than one million card activations within 72 hours of launch and is already the leading NFC payments player in the US, Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed during the Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive event. Cook also outlined future growth plans for the service, including a potential partnership with Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba. More
US payments body hits out at Rite Aid and CVS
“The decision by CVS and Rite Aid to block mobile payments services like Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Softcard is anti-consumer and anti-competitive,” says US-based trade body the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), following the MCX consortium members’ decision to stop accepting NFC payments... More
Alipay demos biometrics for in-store payments
Chinese online payments giant Alipay demonstrated Alipay Touch, a fingerprint biometric system for its mobile wallet app, at a conference in Beijing earlier this month... More
Alipay Wallet hits 190m users
Alibaba-owned online payments giant Alipay’s Alipay Wallet app now has 190 million active users in China who use the solution to shop online via their smartphones, pay bills and pay for public transport... More
Alipay expands to USA
Chinese online payments giant Alipay is offering US merchants the ability to accept payments from Chinese shoppers via a new service called ePass... More
Alipay adds fingerprint security
Chinese online payments giant Alipay has adopted Nok Nok Labs’ S3 Authentication Suite, enabling customers with a Samsung Galaxy S5 to use the fingerprint sensor (FPS) on their device to authenticate payments... More
Alipay partners with Huawei to add biometric security to mobile payments
Chinese online payments giant Alipay is working with Huawei to enable users of the phone maker’s new Ascend Mate 7 handset to secure their mobile payments using a fingerprint sensor built into the phone... More
Alipay tests virtual credit card
Chinese online payments giant Alipay is testing a mobile app based virtual credit card service called Xinren Bao that features customised credit limits based on a user’s shopping history and a 38-day interest-free period on all purchases, Marbridge Consulting reports... More