Alipay at Munich Airport

The Chinese tourist market in Germany is steadily growing and offers retailers large sales opportunities (in 2014, Germany welcomed about two million Chinese tourists). The Wirecard 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% of transactions via mobile payment. This payment method has a high degree of brand awareness with more than 90% of customers and is accepted by more than 600,000 merchants worldwide.

Munich Airport is one of the first large retailers in Europe to implement the platform for Alipay. Wirecard enabled implementation with its ConnectedPOS technology. The software was directly installed in merchants’ till system―in a rapid and uncomplicated way, since it was not necessary to replace the existing infrastructure. For merchants who offer their customers Alipay, the entire checkout process is greatly simplified: a customer who wants to pay cashlessly on the move via the Alipay app shows the bar code on their smartphone display. To initiate the payment process immediately, all a merchant has to do is scan this barcode with a hand scanner.

Thanks to this cooperation, Chinese tourists are able to conveniently pay for their purchases in the arrival and departure areas of Munich Airport using their mobile Alipay app. This has a favorable impact on the participating retailers: Average spending by Chinese tourists increased by about 92% from July to October 2016. Besides payment, the Alipay app also offers geolocalized 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 coupons for the destination country before their journey and save them on the app. When they arrive in their destination country they can then retrieve and redeem the coupons, even without an Internet connection.