WeChat Pay comes to Heathrow
By Retail Technology | Friday October 26 2018
World Duty Free at Heathrow airport is now offering Chinese e-wallet payment service WeChat Pay to Chinese visitors
According to VisitBritain, over 330,000 Chinese travellers visited the UK during last year alone, injecting over one billion pounds into the economy in 2017.
Reflecting this spending power, WeChat Pay supports Chinese shoppers with higher transaction values, presenting a convenient payment solution for those merchants able to take advantage of it.
WeChat also offers effective online marketing opportunities to increase interaction with consumers, with coupons, cash-back promotions and many other features further driving Chinese customers to those shops accepting the payment method.
Initial rollout
World Duty Free has partnered with SafeCharge to offer WeChat Pay and now relies on SafeCharge’s new mobile POS application, a solution for merchants to easily accept QR code-based payment methods.
Tony O’Donnell, UK financial controller at World Duty Free said: “Since the initial rollout in Terminal 4 we have seen a steady increase in transaction volumes and are currently in the process of extending this capability across the other Heathrow terminals. SafeCharge has been instrumental in supporting our fast deployment with high level quality support and we look forward to working closely with the team as we continue to expand across more locations and concessions.”
