Digital payment craze in HK ‘a matter of time’
Hong Kong should be more open-minded in embracing the future of digital payment, and it’s only a matter of time, rather a matter of technology, for the digital payment craze to catch on in the special administrative region, said executives of WeChat Pay — the mobile payment unit of Chinese mainland tech behemoth Tencent Holdings.
“As the Guangdong-Hong KongMacao Greater Bay Area mega plan reinforces the theme of higher-level regional collaboration and freer flow of people, goods, capital and information, looking ahead, the integration of WeChat Pay and WeChat Pay Hong Kong is an inevitable trend,” said Dave Fan, director of WeChat Pay.
“Just a river away, what’s going on in Shenzhen today is a living embodiment of the sheer power of digital innovation. Hong Kong people should head north and see for themselves,” he said.
Fan made the remarks on the sidelines of the WeChat Pay Overseas Partner Conference in Hong Kong on Thursday. The event, with the theme “One for Billion”, has attracted nearly 1,600 local and overseas merchants and service providers in reviewing the new business opportunities nurtured by WeChat Pay’s digital innovation ecosystem.
For years, the mainland’s twin pillars of digital payment — WeChat Pay and Alibaba Group’s Alipay — have been branching out worldwide, chasing after more than 140 million big-spending mainland holidaymakers, who have become a common sight across the globe, including Hong Kong.
As the two payment giants up the stakes in the battle for bigger overseas market shares, Hong Kong has naturally become the “first stop” in localizing their payment apps, which have secured a combined 92 percent share of the mobile payment market in the world’s secondlargest economy.
Having been granted the so-called stored-value facilities licenses by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, along with another 14 digital payment operators in 2016, Alipay and WeChat Pay rushed to roll out their maiden versions of the payment-bysmartphone app in the Hong Kong currency.
After taking in convenience stores, cosmetics shops and many other brand-name brick-and-mortar stores, WeChat Pay is making inroads into the traditional street markets, breaking the Octopus card’s decades-long dominance of MTR ticket purchases, and pushing the payment services to the city’s notoriously stubborn taxi drivers who used to be firm believers that cash is king.
In October last year, WeChat Pay took the lead in allowing Hong Kong users to pay for purchases on the mainland.
Fan said the company is technologically well prepared for the digital payment take-off in the cosmopolitan center.
“It’s only a matter of time. A broader vision ahead is to make WeChat Pay and WeChat Pay Hong Kong both allowed by merchants in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland,” he said.
Tencent reported on Thursday its net profit for the 12 months to December 2018 grew 10 percent year on year to 78.7 billion yuan ($11.8 billion). Revenue jumped 31.5 percent to 312.7 billion yuan on year. The daily average number of payment transactions last year exceeded 1 billion.
In the fourth quarter of 2018, the number of WeChat’s monthly active users rose to 1.1 billion, while the number of monthly active merchants surged more than 80 percent year on year.
Tencent’s share price fell 1.89 percent to close at HK$363 in Hong Kong on Thursday, after having climbed 16 percent so far this year. The benchmark Hang Seng Index edged down 0.85 percent to finish at 29,071.56.
Just a river away, what’s going on in Shenzhen today is a living embodiment of the sheer power of digital innovation.” Dave Fan, director of WeChat Pay