UnionPay Readies 180K POS Terminals With QuickPass

China’s UnionPay International is quickly expanding its QuickPass business overseas to keep up with the accelerating growth of Chinese tourists’ spending abroad.

UnionPay announced Wednesday (March 9) that it has 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.

In a press release, UnionPay International CEO Cai Jianbo said: “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 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.

UnionPay said it has over 2 billion chip cards in circulation worldwide and the firm said it will continue its efforts to accelerate its application to the more than 7 million POS terminals in mainland China.

“Currently, UnionPay is the only international card organization providing contactless mobile payment service for domestic cardholders,” the statement confirmed. Both offline contactless payments and remote online payments are supported by UnionPay QuickPass. The Mobile QuickPass service has first been provided in markets frequently visited by Chinese tourists, UnionPay said.