Adyen Brings WeChat Pay Into its Fold

The expansion of the Chinese mobile payment system continues largely unabated, and news emerged recently of one major coup for WeChat Pay. WeChat Pay is now a part of the Adyen payments platform system, which means that any merchant that’s using Adyen can now take WeChat Pay as payment like they could any other breed of payment system.

WeChat Pay is now part of the “unified commerce” operations of Adyen, taking advantage of a previous expansion that saw Adyen more closely integrated with WeChat. Naturally, most of the users here will be part of the growing Chinese tourist class, who has often been seen looking for ways to use the familiar mobile payments systems found in their own country in other countries while traveling.

The Chinese tourist is becoming increasingly important to retailers in Europe and the United States as these travelers are sufficiently well-heeled to drop some substantial amounts of cash while traveling. Word from Adyen COO Rolenat Prins is that said travelers are spending $5,000 to $6,000 on trips, so offering them the familiar payment systems of choice is giving retailers a clear leg up. Word from McKinsey gave this support; Chinese tourists buying “luxury goods” is reaching around $7.4 billion annually.

Some might scoff at the addition of WeChat Pay; after all, this is the payment system commonly associated with small purchases in China. Alipay is the weapon of choice for the larger purchase, and let’s be honest, the Chinese tourist class isn’t bothering with the small stuff.

However, Adyen added on WeChat Pay for one big reason: it was the only major payment service from China that it hadn’t had in play yet. Adyen now supports WeChat Pay, as well as both Alipay and UnionPay. Now the bases are covered, and somewhere around 90 to 95 percent of mobile payment use in China is covered abroad. This is a development that’s likely to only expand, particularly as Chinese tourists start traveling in more directions and need to be covered accordingly.

A smart move for Adyen, and one that will likely mean a lot of fresh purchases going into Adyen users’ pockets. Plus plenty more payments for the mobile payment providers to process, of course, a development which should leave everybody better off in the end.