Articles tagged “wechat”

Messaging and collaboration tools help businesses run smoothly in these pandemic times, but not all travel agencies have their finger on the pulse.

Latin America's Rappi now offers business travel alongside things like takeaways, pet food and furniture. It doesn’t sound like a winning combination, but different parts of the world have different appetites for digitization.

Booking.com, Airbnb, Marriott, and every high-end retail shop on the Champs-Élysées want to see the proliferation of Alipay and other digital payment services to capture the spending of Chinese travelers. But Alipay's key cross-border payments strategy, despite a record-setting IPO, has run into major snags.

Trump's ban on the Chinese superapp WeChat may turn out to be a mere annoyance for many Chinese travelers. But it could cause real harm to some U.S. travel organizations.

Global payments technology and rules are changing swiftly, led by seamless innovations in Asia that are making life easier for consumers. Travel companies of all sizes are finally taking action in order to stay competitive.

Chinese travelers are the world's largest outbound travel market. With the launch of Helsinki's WeChat collaboration, it seems the days of asking them to pay cash in a destination are numbered.

The travel industry has its own set of unique challenges when it comes to getting cross-border payments right. There are a few key tactics that can turn a good payments strategy into a great one.

Mobile payments are already commonplace in parts of Asia — China particularly — but as travelers adopt these tools, travel companies will need both local expertise and deep technological capabilities to make sure their guests can pay when and how they like.

Consumers in the West reach almost reflexively for the Google Maps app as the service becomes a nearly ubiquitous utility despite a dearth of messaging and payments. Whether it evolves into the next superapp may depend on whether users really want a do-everything app and the mood of regulators seeking to break up big tech.

Americans and Europeans who used to scoff at QR-style bar codes are going to need to learn how to use them to pay for meals, attractions, and tickets whenever they visit Japan. The reason? Swelling Chinese tourism is prompting the country to adopt China’s preferred mobile payment method.