Overseas users can use the WeChat Pay app across various payment scenarios in the country
Overseas users can use the WeChat Pay app across various payment scenarios in the country. Photo: courtesy of Alina Kuptsova from Pixabay.
Tencent’s WeChat Pay has joined forces with global card associations to enable overseas users to link their credit cards with the messenger cum mobile payment app in order to make payment transactions and services in China.
The card associations with whom the messenger app is collaborating in this regard are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, and Discover Global Network.
WeChat Pay can be used across multiple payment scenarios
The collaboration means that overseas users can use the messenger app across various payment scenarios. Payments can be made for shopping, transportation, restaurants, accommodation and others.
According to WeChat Pay, the number of overseas visitors travelling to mainland China and those who have decided to stay and work in the country has gone up.
The messenger app stated: “However, the inconvenience of not being able to use the widely adopted local mobile payments is becoming a major pain point for overseas people living or visiting mainland China.
“The Chinese government has introduced a variety of policies to bring convenience to their daily lives, something which WeChat Pay is committed to helping achieve through quality of life enhancing innovation.”
The messenger app further said that considering that overseas visitors are expected to use more international credit cards, its collaboration with global card associations will make it more convenient while traveling and also for living in mainland China.
WeChat Pay claims to be already supporting foreign users in China with mainland bank cards, credit cards, and savings cards and from up to 128 available banks registered with their passports.
The messenger app said that users have to just enter their bank card number, name, ID number and the mobile phone number for binding their bank cards to make use of it.
Recently, the Chinese app unveiled a new payment device called Frog Pro. The device is a point-of-sale (POS) machine that will enable shoppers to make payments by scanning their face at checkout.
The Frog Pro device features a 10.1inch double-sided screen, a 3D depth-sensing camera that will enable the facial recognition payment function, and also a QR code scanner.