Nets, an electronic payments provider in Singapore, is holding discussions with China’s Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay, concerning allowing people who use the NetsPay digital wallet to do mobile payments in China.
This collaboration lets users of NetsPay to scan QR codes with merchants that use WeChat Pay in China in transactions using Singapore dollars.
Should the partnership be finalized, the user base of WeChat Pay will widen further, since similar possibilities are also being explored in other countries. For their part, Singaporeans will benefit from the convenience of these transactions, as WeChat Pay is widely used in China.
Singapore’s NetsPay will be the first third-party digital wallet to enter a partnership with WeChat for cross-border payments. Singaporean visitors to China will undoubtedly find this mode of payment to be to their advantage since payments via mobile app is very frequently used in China. The central bank has even had to issue a memo to establishments to remind them that cash payments should still be accepted.
Chinese tourists use WeChat Pay for cross-border payments at establishments that use the platform in the United States, as well as countries in Europe and in South East Asia.
In September, Tencent tried using mobile payments for visitors coming into mainland China, with an announcement that people who use WeChat Pay HK in Hong Kong could buy from selected retail merchants in China with the purchases settled in Hong Kong dollars.
For now, the major mobile payment services in China such as WeChat Pay and Alipay are concentrating on business establishments overseas to start using their payment services for Chinese tourists in other countries.