North American Restaurants Court Chinese Visitors with Mobile Payment

North American restaurants that accept Chinese mobile payment applications Alipay and WeChat Pay through SnapPay Inc., are seeing increased sales from Chinese consumers.

SnapPay, a provider of international payment solutions, is enabling small and independent businesses to accept these popular Chinese mobile payment applications.

With SnapPay’s payment gateway, restaurants and retailers can accept preferred Chinese payment methods with minimal effort and training time.

“After adopting SnapPay, the company helped us with an initial Alipay coupon promotion, and sales and adoption instantly started to take off,” said Vienna Liu, owner and operator of Chic Xi, an upscale, Chinese-Cantonese restaurant in Toronto. “Many of our customers travel more than an hour to experience our home style, authentic Cantonese cuisine, but also because they can use Alipay and WeChat Pay, which gives them access to funds they otherwise wouldn’t have. Our estimate is that customers spend 10-15% more when they have the option to pay with Alipay or WeChat Pay.”

The number of Chinese visitors, immigrants and students in Canada per year has been steadily rising; providing small businesses with an opportunity to capitalize on a large and ever-increasing customer segment. According to Destination Canada, there were 737,000 visitors from China in 2018, doubling the number of annual travellers since 2013, with an average annual growth rate of 16%.

“Offering Alipay and WeChat Pay has been responsible for a critical part of our growth,” said Peter Yuan, manager of Neptune Chinese Kitchen, a Vancouver-based restaurant, part of Neptune Restaurant Group, a network of 12 Chinese restaurants in the greater Vancouver area. “We’re close to the University of British Columbia and International Chinese students don’t have discretionary money, and don’t have credit cards. Alipay and WeChat Pay provides these students a new funding source. In just 3-months since turning on SnapPay and offering Chinese mobile payments, we’ve seen our sales skyrocket 30 percent. And we estimate that spending per visit has increased 20 percent for customers that use Alipay or WeChat Pay.”

SnapPay provides marketing solutions for clients in their native language on Chinese social platforms to drive consumer community engagement with brands at a local, hyper-targeted level. Engaging consumers on Alipay and WeChat Pay is critical to drive spend.

“Alipay and WeChat Pay provide the ultimate convenience for our customers that include Chinese visitors and students, travelling and studying abroad,” said Calvin Su, owner and operator of Butter Baker, the popular downtown Toronto bake shop. Butter Baker offers a unique selection of sweet and savoury pastries, ice cream, hot & cold beverages, and more. It uses fresh, natural, local, in-season organic ingredients and provides a fusion of French-style food, combined with rich, Taiwanese flavour. “SnapPay made it easy to start accepting Chinese mobile payments, and as customers learn they can use Alipay and WeChat Pay, we’ve seen a substantial increase in repeat business.”

SnapPay provides a payment solution that enables consumers to digitally pay in Chinese currency, while merchants get paid in U.S or Canadian currency. SnapPay lowers the cost per transaction for both merchant and consumer, while providing a better customer experience by offering Chinese consumers the option to pay with the mobile apps and currency they are familiar with.

Photo by Alicia Steels on Unsplash