CITCON Partners with Pacific Gateway to Bring WeChat Pay to Major U.S. Airports
LAS VEGAS, Oct. 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CITCON, the leading cross-border mobile payment company, announced a partnership with Pacific Gateway, a leading airport-based retailer and restauranteur, to launch WeChat Pay at its retail shops in San Francisco International Airport and Mineta San Jose International Airport.
By integrating CITCON's payment solution, renowned Retail and F&B brands including US News & World Report, Where Traveler, See's Candies, Jamba Juice and Peet's Coffee are now able to accept payment from Chinese consumers by scanning a QR code through WeChat Pay, the payment instrument fully integrated within WeChat, China's most popular social media network with over 963 million active users. Merchants who accept WeChat Pay will be able to participate in various promotions throughout the year leveraging WeChat and CITCON's marketing resources.
"The decision to work with CITCON and WeChat Pay was an easy one for us," said Joe Waller, CEO of Pacific Gateway. "The Pacific Gateway culture is founded on the belief that we have to constantly look for ways to improve the travel experience. With WeChat Pay, we are connecting with and welcoming millions of Chinese consumers on an integrated platform. It is an excellent way to show our Chinese guests how much we respect them and value their business."
More than 200 Million Chinese tourists are expected to travel globally in 2020. United States has been one of the most popular destinations for Chinese travelers, and China is expected to rank No.1 for both international tourist number as well as tourist spending in the next five years.
"Airports as one of the most important travel retail channels, represent one of the biggest growth opportunities among Retail business worldwide," said Chuck Huang, Founder & CEO at CITCON, "Mobile payment is dominating in China and Chinese travelers are driving the adoption of mobile payment in the U.S. with a strong demand from the travel industry. The QR-based mobile payment technology open up new opportunities for business to integrated marketing and payment to drive business growth."
"Shopping is a substantial part of the travel experience. Providing the most familiar and convenient payment option for Chinese consumers at their first and last stops when they travel abroad, will create a memorable experience for travelers to bring home the best of the destinations," said Wei Jiang, COO & President at CITCON, "This also allows business to further engage with their customers, encourage spending and tap into the Chinese outbound tourism market that accounts for 21% of the world's international tourism spending in 2016 and continues to grow. The performance of the pilot launch well exceeded our expectation, and we are excited about the national roll-out with Pacific Gateway to cover all major U.S. airports in the next few months."
About CITCON
Silicon Valley-based CITCON is the mobile payment solution leader for the fast-growing international travel commerce and retail market. In North America, CITCON is the first and largest authorized merchant acquirer for WeChat Pay and Alipay, two of the most popular mobile wallet providers in the world with over 1 billion active consumers. CITCON provides both in-store, and mobile / web / E-commerce payment solutions for thousands of merchants including renowned brands such as DFS, Pacific Gateway, China Unicom, YamiBuy among others, covering a variety of tourist related sectors, such as Retail, Hotel, Food & Beverage, Transportation, Entertainment and Ecommerce. CITCON was founded by Chuck Huang, a mobile payment veteran with over 10 years' experience in financial services and payment industries in both China and the US. CITCON management team consists of payment and technology veterans from VISA, PayPal, eBay, Uber, JD, Western Union. CITCON is backed by top notch Silicon Valley venture capital firms and received strategic investments from two public-traded multi-billion-dollar technology companies in China. For more information, please visit http://www.citcon.com/
About Pacific Gateway
Pacific Gateway is a rapidly growing company with airport-based retail and culinary operations across the United States. We combine 19 years of experience and a start-up attitude to challenge the goliaths in our industry. Pacific Gateway operates airport locations of well-known national brands like Kiehl's, Swarovski, TUMI, Lolli and Pops, Jo Malone, See's Candies, Ghirardelli Chocolate, Jamba Juice, Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, US News & World Report, Where Traveler, The New Stand, and Peet's Coffee.
About WeChat
WeChat envisions and innovates new ways for people to connect, communicate and share. A mobile social communication app designed for smartphone users, WeChat is one of the world's fastest growing social apps with hundreds of millions of users internationally. WeChat empowers users in fun and dynamic ways, by bringing together messaging, social communication and games in one seamless, interactive experience, with comprehensive privacy and security settings that can be tailored as needed. WeChat provides a central point of control for users to share voice, photos, videos, and text messages across their entire social eco-system. Through Official Accounts, WeChat allows brands to deliver rich and high-touch appealing content experiences to engage with and grow their communities. WeChat is available free to download on Android, iOS, Windows operating system, web version and Mac for desktop version.
Evelyn Yang
Head of Marketing & Communications
Citcon
+1 888 254 4887
[email protected]
SOURCE CITCON
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