China’s Alipay links to Amadeus

BANGKOK, 30 July 2014: Amadeus has teamed up with Alipay, an online payment service provider in China to add the option of paying through Alipay when using Amadeus to book airline and travel products.
The step makes it easier for Amadeus’ travel providers to serve Chinese travellers now that the option to pay with Alipay’s online payment system has been added to Amadeus’s Payment Platform.
APP allows 300 airline customers to access more than 250 relevant acquiring banks and 100 alternative methods of payment worldwide.
“With this collaboration we add a key payment provider to our platform to satisfy our customers’ payment needs. Our travel-payment expertise, combined with Alipay’s market penetration and the ease of using Alipay’s products, will provide our customers with the right solution,” commented Amadeus Travel Payments head Celia Pereiro.
China set a record in 2012 as the world’s top-spending tourism market with a total expenditure of USD102 billion[1]. In 2013, 100 million Chinese tourists made outbound trips, and industry experts estimate this figure to reach 200 million[2] by 2020. Chinese tourism spending is expected to triple in the same period. China is also set to become the world’s biggest domestic travel market by 2017[3].
[1] UN World Tourism Organization press release (No.: PR13020) (Apr 13)
[2] Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia press release (Jan 2014)
[3] Shaping the Future of Travel –Macro Trends driving industry growth over the next decade, Oxford Economics report commissioned by Amadeus.

Sourced: ttrweekly