Global Payments Expands China UnionPay to Five Additional Asian Markets
Global Payments Asia-Pacific, a joint venture between the US-based Global Payments and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), has launched China UnionPay (CUP) card acceptance service in Brunei, the Maldives, the Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
This service allows mainland Chinese tourists to pay for goods and services with their CUP cards at merchants served by Global Payments. The extension of the CUP service to those five markets marks another milestone for Global Payments’ CUP card acceptance programme, which was started six years ago in Hong Kong and has since grown successfully into Macau, Malaysia and Taiwan.
With more than 2.1 billion CUP cards in circulation and the rising number of mainland Chinese travelling around Asia, the new service helps Global Payments merchants in Brunei, the Maldives, the Philippines, Singapore, and Sri Lanka to capture the rising spending trends of the mainland Chinese visitors, who presently pay mostly with cash. Merchants can simply add the CUP card acceptance functionality to their Global Payments’ point-of-sale (POS) terminals through a simple and free programming of their terminals.
President – Global Payments Asia-Pacific, Ian Courtnage, said: “Global Payments is the largest regional card merchant acquirer of China UnionPay by merchant base, and we are proud to extend our regional expertise in processing CUP card transactions to more markets across Asia-Pacific. China is contributing significantly to outbound tourism in many Asian destinations and our merchants in those markets can now welcome more mainland Chinese tourists to their establishments by accepting CUP card payments. CUP acquiring adds to our broad range of card types that we already support and this new service enhances Global Payments’ one-stop-shop card processing strategy for merchants.”