Chinese shoppers can now use Alipay to buy jewellery in-store, after Beaverbrooks adopted new cross-channel technology.
The jeweller is now able to offer shoppers who have the Alipay app on their smartphones the option of using a familiar payment method when they buy from its store in the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, using technology from Verifone.
The announcement comes just after more than 700,000 visitors and local residents took part in Chinese New Year celebrations in London alone. Visit Britain figures suggest that in 2015, Chinese tourists each spent an average of £2,170 in UK retail stores, making this group the biggest spenders. Verifone says that just under half of China’s online payments took place via Alipay in October 2016.
Verifone introduced the technology earlier this year. At the time, it said its new mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solution made for an ever more convenient experience for Chinese tourists.
“By expanding Alipay acceptance across many borders for an easy, frictionless traveling and shopping experience, Verifone is creating a future that takes the convenient cashless payment experience to the next level for Chinese consumers wherever they are,” said Albert Liu, EVP, corporate development at Verifone. “The potential of Verifone’s footprint of installed devices in more than 150 countries means we are connecting retailers to increasing opportunities to engage and serve global consumers from the POS.”
Douglas Feagin, SVP of Ant Financial Services Group and head of Alipay International, said: “Scale, security and speed are important to us as we look to enable our customers to walk into a store while traveling abroad and pay for purchases with the Alipay App—just like they do here in China. Verifone has each of these attributes, and as a trusted partner to global and national retailers, we benefit from Verifone’s scale to bring broader Alipay acceptance for Chinese consumers who travel abroad.”
