Asia

In the past few years the Chinese government has loosened restrictions on foreign travel, enabling millions of its citizenry to visit foreign lands. Along with a greater ability to travel is the enhanced prosperity Chinese consumers have reaped at home — and now bring with them on vacations to purchase foreign goods.

China has been promising openness to outside payment companies for more than a decade. So far it hasn’t delivered, according to Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

In its 10th year promoting an unofficial Chinese holiday celebrating singlehood, Alibaba’s online sales hit a record $30.8 billion (RMB213.5), exceeding last year’s record by 27 percent.

American Express' progress with local officials in China regarding card payments provides a potential early advantage against rivals like Mastercard and Visa. But building a market in China has never been easy for a global card brand.

Adapting to Chinese consumers’ expectations of mobile pay options can help international retailers remain relevant and competitive by offering an easy, smooth, and interactive customer experience, writes Franklin Chu, managing director for Azoya USA.

Ant Financial’s push to expand global acceptance of its Alipay mobile wallet to wherever Chinese tourists go continues in Australia through Tyro, a fintech payments operation that obtained a banking license in 2015.

Payments technology and fleet card provider WEX has partnered with Japanese-based international card network, JCB, as expands its virtual cards into Japan.

As mega data collaborations among multinational companies threaten to dominate payment technology, developers are digging even deeper into decentralized models as a workaround to sell both greater data analysis and more security.

Mastercard and Visa’s single online payment experience, which has angered some merchants and could shake up the e-commerce market from PayPal to Amazon, is progressing toward a 2019 launch.

Despite the fervor over mobile wallets and banking, one day consumers may never need to open a dedicated bank or payment app.