Chinese tourists have become the overseas shoppers with the highest spending power, relying on QR codes to pay for goods and services on a daily basis. With more than 130 million Chinese citizens travelling around the globe in 2017 alone, this trend is presenting a sizeable commercial opportunity for those businesses wanting to accept the Chinese payment methods online and across their point of sale.

Drawing on the most recent surveys and statistics available, the whitepaper provides solid guidance for merchants to understand the anatomy of the Chinese shopper, the Chinese payments landscape, how local shopping habits are challenging long-established payment models, and most importantly how to easily integrate these innovative payment methods.

“Today, China is a huge laboratory for any kind of experiment in terms of buying and paying. China gives us a glimpse into the future of what will happen next in the rest of the world,” states David Avgi, CEO at SafeCharge. “Payments via mobile phone will soon be a standard all around the globe, so the sooner merchants get familiar with this kind of technology, the better their competitiveness and attractiveness towards a growing mass of shoppers, regardless of their nationality”.

“SafeCharge has been one of the first payment service partners to recognise the importance of Chinese digital payment methods,” adds Yuval Ziv, CCO at SafeCharge. “As businesses realise the huge commercial opportunity brought by these increasingly popular mobile payment methods, understanding how to integrate them will be crucial from a competitive standpoint. This guide will provide merchants with fresh insights and practical advice on how to be more attractive to Chinese shoppers and unlock new revenue streams”.

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With over ten years of expertise in highly regulated payments markets, SafeCharge has designed Identity Manager as an agnostic gateway enabling merchants to connect to a wide range of identity validation providers worldwide, including eKYC, document verification as well as age verification, PEP and sanction checks. SafeCharge Identity Manager is fully incorporated into the SafeCharge Native+ Payments Engine; and is therefore easy to implement as part of SafeCharge Hosted Payment Pages as well as through dedicated APIs.

The solution automates customer verification flows, cleverly re-routing checks to an alternative provider should one be unsuccessful. In case of a failed eKYC check, customers are invited to upload their documents and get verified using a mobile phone or a desktop for the utmost security. Check flows can also be customised according to customer geographical location as well as business and sector requirements.

Identity Manger is addressed to those online businesses for which identity validation checks are a mandatory requirement subject to industry regulation, or required by businesses on their own. These include not only gaming, financial services and marketplaces, but also insurance and telecoms providing digital online services.

Yuval Ziv, CCO SafeCharge, explains: “The beauty of Identity Manager is that with one single contract and one unified reporting interface, businesses can stay ahead of customer authentication regulation requirements and prevent fraudulent transactions using the relevant local identity validation checks wherever their customers are.” He added: “SafeCharge runs the smart routing logic between check providers which provides a huge time saving and ensures the smooth operation for our customers”.

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eCheck Select verifies bank-level data in real-time, including customer identification and account information. At the time of transaction, eCheck Select confirms a person’s account balance and processes the payment or terminates it if there are insufficient funds.

“We’re pleased to make our ACH technology available via the SafeCharge Payments Engine,” said Jamie MacKay, CEO, Mazooma. “With eCheck Select, iGaming operators entering the newly-regulated US market can offer players in the US a positive gaming experience.”

Following a successful expansion across US and Asian markets in 2018—with the most recent opening of a new office in China earlier this month—SafeCharge is rapidly consolidating its global presence to support local merchants operating across borders. With one of the largest portfolios of local payment methods and card acquiring options, SafeCharge Payment Engine is enabling merchants to take back control of their payment processing capabilities securely and effectively on a global scale.

“The US is one of the largest markets in the world. There’s a growing requirement from both customers and businesses to enable seamless local payment acceptance, boosting conversion. By making eCheck Select available to provide real time ACH payments, we aim to support our customers successfully expanding into the US, further enhancing our innovative omnichannel Payments Engine designed to maximize payment conversions,” said David Avgi, CEO, SafeCharge.

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“Considering the increasing business with Chinese merchants and the closer relationships with Chinese payments giants Alipay, Tencent and Unionpay, establishing local customer support is a natural next step as we provide the highest quality of service to our partners,” explains Yoav Chernitz, China Business Development Director at SafeCharge. “Demand more is SafeCharge’s motto: we deepen our presence in China in order to deliver more to our customers, to interact more with them and to align our product development more with Chinese customers’ unique requirements”

“A strong presence in China is key to support both Chinese clients aiming to expand their business internationally and for non-Chinese companies looking for effective channels to deal with Chinese customers,” adds Willy Kwa, Regional Director APAC at SafeCharge. “All customers want the same, no matter where they are located: they want to be supported closely, especially when they are entering unknown markets”.

Thanks to its comprehensive business relationships with Alipay, Tencent and Union Pay, SafeCharge aims at developing further support for Western clients accepting payments from Chinese customers and marketing their product and services to local customers.

“China is taking a leading role in the global economy, specifically in the field of e-commerce and payments innovation” says David Avgi, CEO at SafeCharge. “Besides providing local support to new Chinese international players, we have expanded our footprint in China to learn and develop strong partnerships as we believe Chinese companies will play a very important role in the future of fintech innovation.”

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As one of the fastest-growing online travel agencies in the world, Kiwi.com pioneered its Virtual Interlining Technology which can analyse over 15 billion flight combinations – from non-cooperating airlines—into a single itinerary, to provide the best customer experience within any given budget. With the need to match increasingly different booking experiences from customers around the globe, Kiwi.com has furthered its mission to make travelling simpler and more accessible by investing in the latest payments technology.

“In today’s globalised world, providing a flexible travel platform that can adapt to passengers’ varying travel needs is vital to success. To offer the best experience possible to our global customer base, we needed a payments technology provider who not only shared our ambitious mindset, but also possessed a knowledge of cross-border payments,” said Juraj Striezenec, chief financial officer at Kiwi.com. “By partnering with SafeCharge, we are able to take advantage of a solid payments technology infrastructure that will ultimately enable us to grow and expand into other markets.”

“We were looking for a payment partner able to provide global acquiring with a wide portfolio of global solutions”, adds Natália Čermáková, Payment Specialist at Kiwi.com “Our partnership with SafeCharge will allow us to offer to our clients more payment products, more currencies and an improved overall customer experience. This is key for a company as Kiwi.com that aims to quickly roll out in new markets”.

By providing a seamless checkout experience, Kiwi.com will be able to increase conversion rates and scale up internationally.

David Avgi, CEO at SafeCharge, added, “with digital shopping increasing dramatically in volume, omni channel experience is becoming a must for the next generation travellers. And with the rise of local payment preferences, it is important for merchants to fine-tune their payments strategies to streamline the shopping experience for customers around the world. This partnership once again demonstrates the capabilities of our native payments platform as the ideal solution for travel businesses demanding flexible solutions to grow and expand internationally.”

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Gett’s on-demand mobility app is available across 120 cities worldwide across the UK, the US, Israel and Russia, allowing millions of customers to reach their destination on a daily basis. With mobility services often resulting in very complex processes involving fare splits, foreign banks and drivers having to be paid for the correct amount, SafeCharge Reconciliation Manager will allow the business to automatically prevent payment mismatches, duplicate billing, invoicing errors and rebate withholding. Thanks to a constant snapshot of account balances for all payment methods in a single, integrated report, Gett has now more control over their revenues to grow the business further.

“We chose SafeCharge Reconciliation Manager because of the company’s extensive experience in the payments industry and deep understanding of the pain-points when it comes to the reconciliation and matching of transactions,” said Guy Douek, Global Head of Payments at Gett.“ At Gett, we process tens of millions of transactions and as such, we need to reconcile information from various banks, gateway providers, corporate banks, acquiring banks and internal systems. SafeCharge Reconciliation Manager has automated the process, freeing up resources from what was a tedious and manual task prone to human error, enabling us to concentrate on investigating and sorting any payment gaps.”

“For businesses operating within complex payment scenarios, SafeCharge Reconciliation Manager is the ideal solution to streamline all reporting into a single unified overview, to ensure that all payments have been received correctly and that processing fees are in line with related service contracts,” explained Yuval Ziv, CCO, SafeCharge. “Many unforeseen circumstances can negatively impact the reconciliation process, from switching to a new provider, to hidden fees. Our solution is saving our customers thousands of dollars in revenue, putting them back in control of their payments systems.”

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