Boxing Day 2018 saw record high sales to Chinese shoppers across major retailers and shopping centre groups such as Westfield, Chadstone, QVB and Pacific Fair. Now, a regional collaboration between an Australian fintech company and China’s leading mobile payment technology company is connecting Australian merchants directly with Chinese consumers.

Australian AirPay Financial Technologies and Chinese mobile payment provider SwiftPass have formed "AirPass", a new lifestyle brand that lets local retailers accept WeChat Pay and Alipay both online and offline, as well as reach overseas markets to make the most of the global Chinese spending boom.

The new brand brings China's most popular ePayment, eStore, eCard, eMarketing and eWallet services to Australia, allowing Chinese tourists, students and migrants to make over the counter purchases by simply scanning a QR code on their smartphone.

Australian e-commerce websites and mobile apps can also integrate the payment platform, taking advantage of AsiaPay's PayDollar payment gateway. Supporting multiple shopping cart plugins, PayDollar provides a one-stop online payment solution allowing local merchants to accept Alipay, WeChat Pay, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, PayPal and ZipPay.

"AirPass is providing a user-friendly platform for Australian retailers to build their own eStore to facilitate marketing and payment - which is the key to entering the Chinese consumer market," said SwiftPass Technologies VP Tong Liu.

Luxury brands have begun adopting the AirPass platform in order to better reach Chinese shoppers, including Australian retailers Paspaley and Harrolds. 

"We are thrilled to announce our regional partnership with SwiftPass and recently launch WeChat Pay and Alipay to Australia's largest and oldest pearling company Paspaley," says AirPay Financial Technologies chief executive Jimmy Zhu. "There is huge demand from the market pushing us to deliver more advanced payment and marketing products."

Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Valentino, Mulberry, and Givenchy are among the global luxury brands to express their interest in the AirPass platform.

AirPass will also assist Australian retailers and brands with setting up their own eStore on WeChat, the popular Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. This allows local retailers to sell products via the WeChat ecosystem, reaching new customers in China along with Chinese communities around the globe. WeChat has over a billion monthly active users according to statistics portal Statista.

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