Wirecard Case Study: Alipay at Munich Airport – Wirecard enables the acceptance of China’s favorite mobile payment solution

Find out how Chinese tourists can pay via Alipay App thanks to Wirecard’s ConnectedPOS technology.

The Potential

The Chinese tourist market in Germany is steadily growing and offers retailers large sales opportunities (2014 Germany has welcomed about 2 Million Chinese tourists). Wirecard’s payment solution for Alipay enables retailers to accept the most popular Chinese mobile payment solution at the point of sale and attract new, financially strong customers from China. Alipay is trusted by 450 million active members and registers 50 percent of transactions via mobile payment. The payment method has a high degree of brand awareness with more than 90 percent of customers and is represented by more than 600,000 merchants worldwide.

The Solution

Munich Airport is one of the first largest retailers in Europe that has implemented the platform to get a quick acceptance for Alipay payments in the central till system. Wirecard enabled the implementation with its ConnectedPOS technology. The software was directly installed in the merchant’s till system – in a rapid and uncomplicated way since exchanging with the existing infrastructure is not necessary. For the merchants, who offer their customers Alipay, the entire checkout process is greatly simplified: a customer who wants to pay cashless on the move via the Alipay App will show the barcode on their smartphone display. To initiate the payment process immediately, all a merchant must do is to scan this barcode with a hand scanner.

The Result

Thanks to this cooperation, Chinese tourists are able to conveniently pay for their shopping in the arrival and departure areas of Munich Airport using their Alipay App. This has a favorable impact on the participating retailers: The average spending of the Chinese tourists has increased about 92 percent from July to October 2016. Besides payment, the Alipay App also offers geolocalised and targeted offers to the app’s users: For example, retailers provide Alipay stands with QR codes to scan and participate in the sales generation campaign. Furthermore, Chinese travelers can also browse the vouchers of the destination country bevor their journey and save them on their app. When they arrive in their destination country they are able to retrieve and redeem the vouchers even without an internet connection.