UnionPay Delivers Instant Discounts To X-Border Consumers

China’s largest payment and clearing network, UnionPay, is looking to enhance the cross-border consumer experience with the launch of its “YouJiHua” marketing platform.

In what the company calls the first open cross-border marketing platform created by a bankcard scheme, UnionPay and its partners will use “YouJiHua” to deliver instant discounts and accurate marketing for cross-border consumption.

In a press release on Wednesday (July 6), Ge Huayong, chairman of China UnionPay, explained that “YouJiHua” can be used in two ways by cardholders: by obtaining a QR code discount coupon via the UnionPay, BOC and China Merchants Bank mobile apps or by receiving the promoted discount coupons through the apps of partner travel agencies when booking air and hotel travel.

UnionPay said “YouJiHua” is aimed at establishing a more precise marketing model, developing a new business model by allowing issuers, acquirers, travel agencies and merchants to operate within the same industry chain and improving the overall experience of cardholders.

The “YouJiHua” platform adheres to the “win-win cooperation and sharing growth” core value that UnionPay follows, Huayong added.

To keep up with the accelerating growth of Chinese tourists’ spending abroad, UnionPay announced earlier this year that it is quickly expanding its QuickPass business overseas.

The payment giant equipped nearly 180,000 POS terminals in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore with the ability to accept QuickPass chip cards and other mobile QuickPass-enabled products.

“UnionPay launched Mobile QuickPass together with commercial banks and major mobile phone manufacturers worldwide. It covers mobile phone brands, including Huawei, ZTE and Apple, and supports multiple payment channels,” UnionPay International CEO Cai Jianbo said back in March.

“UnionPay will take advantage of its network and technology to accelerate the launch of Mobile QuickPass overseas and to deliver secure and convenient cross-border payment experience to cardholders. It is also important for UnionPay to expand Cloud QuickPass on a global scale.”

According to the statement, UnionPay QuickPass has seen an overseas transaction volume boost of eight times that of what it was in 2015. The largest market of QuickPass terminals is in Australia, with nearly 30 percent of brick-and-mortar retailers in the country that accept UnionPay also accepting QuickPass.