Our latest mobile payments news covers the globe with highlights from new payments alliances and technologies in China, EU, Singapore, Australia, India, Korea and the US. Innovations include new peer-to-peer message apps, parking payments, restaurant and fitness gym payment apps and more.

Stripe adds support for Alipay and WeChat Pay in China, creating new opportunities for cross-border sales. Tencent followed Alipay, launching WeChat Pay in Europe. Since its recent launch, Korea’s LG Pay has global ambitions including servicing the US. In Singapore, United Overseas Bank’s PayNow app allows customers to pay and transfer money using message apps.

India has a whole new set of non-banking, fintech players from Google, WhatsApp, TrueCaller and Amazon, to Hike and Quatrro BPO all vying for a piece of the huge payments industry which Boston Consulting says could reach $500 billion by 2020. Also in India, Flipkart’s PhonePe will add new financial services to its mobile payments app.

In the UK, Android Pay users will now have the option of adding American Express to their payment choices. EasyPark’s Find & Pay app could help drivers find and pay for parking space and save the average 2500 hours they spend in a lifetime searching for parking. Restaurants are hoping mobile payment apps will help drive new business as the trend towards home food delivery grows according to research from The NPD Group.

Australia’s Eftpos just completed its two billionth transaction and plans to roll out new products and services, such as “Tap & Pay” and mobile pay. In New York, fitness app POPiN allows users and visitors to go to any participating gym, sign in with a scan and pay only for the time used at a number of upscale gyms.

Stripe adds support for Alipay and WeChat Pay, China’s top digital payment services

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/09/stripe-alipay-wechat-pay/US firm Stripe said today it has agreed to global deals with Alipay and WeChat Pay, two digital services that dominate consumer spending in China. Alipay, which is managed by Alibaba affiliate firm Ant Financial, counts over 500 million users, while WeChat Pay — the digital payment feature within China’s top chat app WeChat — claims more than 600 million users.

Beyond sheer numbers, both services dominate the landscape in China, accounting for more than 90 percent of China’s mobile wallet market. They are estimated to have processed close to $3 trillion cumulatively in 2016, according to a UN report, which put Alipay slightly ahead of $1.7 trillion compared to $1.2 trillion for WeChat Pay. Stripe itself claims handles “billions of [U.S.] dollars a year for hundreds of thousands of businesses.”

These new deals won’t do much for Stripe in China — that isn’t the point. Instead, they make it possible for online retailers across the world to accept payment through China’s most popular wallet services. Via techcrunch.com

Tencent launches WeChat Pay in Europe to challenge Alibaba’s Alipay

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/wechat-pay-europe-launch-tencent-to-challenge-alipay.htmlChinese internet giant Tencent launched its WeChat Pay payments service in Europe on Monday, challenging rival Alipay, which is owned by rival Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial.

WeChat is a giant social media service that has 938 million monthly active users. Tencent has partnered with German payments firm Wirecard to allow European retailers to accept WeChat pay as a payment option.

The move is specifically aimed at Chinese tourists coming to Europe and is not necessarily a challenger to the likes of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, both of which operate in parts of Europe. Chinese consumers are very used to using mobile payment services like WeChat Pay for everything from ride-hailing services to shopping. When they go abroad, they want these same services. Via cnbc.com

LG Pay Soon Coming to More Countries, Devices and Banks

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/07/lg-pay-soon-coming-countries-devices-banks.htmlLG Pay will be coming to more countries, devices, and banks in the not-too-distant future, according to the company’s mobile division head Cho Jun-ho. The firm’s mobile payment solution had a slow start as it was facing a number of delays during development and was reportedly close to being canceled due to a number of issues before finally debuting in LG’s home country in early June.

Cho is now confident that the service will expand its reach somewhat soon, though the tech giant’s senior executive has yet to provide a more detailed timeframe for that expansion. In a Wednesday statement given to The Investor, Cho said that the Seoul-based original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has been almost exclusively focused on improving the quality of its mobile tool during its first month on the market and has already gathered vast amounts of feedback on the service.

LG Pay will eventually also support online payments, Cho revealed, though it’s currently unclear when the Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer is planning to debut that functionality. The service will trickle down to LG’s mid-range and entry-level devices in 2018, which is also when it might have its first overseas launch. While no specifics have yet been shared by the Korean tech giant in any capacity, it’s understood that its foreign ambitions related to LG Pay will initially be focused on the United States. Via androidheadlines.com

UOB’s PayNow goes live, allowing payments using just mobile number or NRIC

http://www.todayonline.com/business/uobs-paynow-goes-live-allowing-payments-using-just-mobile-number-or-nricUnited Overseas Bank’s (UOB) PayNow goes live on Monday (July 10), with the bank saying the launch will enable its customers to be the first in Singapore to pay and to be paid via the service on their social messaging apps.

PayNow allows people to transfer money through their bank’s mobile or Internet banking service to a registered recipient with just their mobile phone number, NRIC or FIN. Besides UOB, Citibank Singapore, DBS Bank/POSB, HSBC, Maybank, OCBC Bank and Standard Chartered Bank will offer the PayNow service from Monday, according to a statement by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) last month.

UOB’s peer-to-peer fund transfers have been made possible with the launch of UOB MyKey – the bank’s mobile keyboard for Android smartphones and an extension of its mobile banking app, UOB Mighty. Once UOB MyKey has been set as the default keyboard, it can be used in any social messaging app, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, to make PayNow payments, the bank said. Via todayonline.com

Why messaging apps may be a key prong in India’s digital payments push

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/why-messaging-apps-may-be-a-key-prong-in-indias-digital-payments-push/articleshow/59464646.cmsMoney at the speed of a message. Perhaps this is the mantra that social media companies, internet companies and even a business process outsourcer are following as they eye a slice of the 95 per cent-plus cash economy that could potentially go digital. Many of those cash transactions — like person-to-person (P2P), person-to-merchant (P2M) or consumer payments — could be done on digital platforms such as chat rooms or messaging apps. Accelerating the shift from cash to digital is the government’s push for a digital payments economy with a lofty target of 25 billion such transactions this fiscal year.

That thrust is attracting a diverse set of tech players — none of them traditional banks—from Google, WhatsApp TrueCaller and Amazon, to Hike and Quatrro BPO, among others. Quatrro, baby of BPO pioneer Raman Roy, who is also current chairman of IT lobby Nasscom, is bringing European payments platform RS2 to India (See inset box: Quatrro-From BPO to Digital Payments).

Pointing to a Google-Boston Consulting Group study, B Amrish Rau, CEO, PayU India, says the digital payments industry is expected to be worth $500 billion by 2020. PayU, a payment gateway services provider to e-commerce and other companies, recently launched a digital payments product as well. Via economictimes.indiatimes.com

With PhonePe, Flipkart makes a quiet entry into financial services

https://yourstory.com/2017/07/phonepe-flipkart-sameer-nigam-rahul-chari/India’s most valuable startup, Flipkart, has designs on your money. It plans to use its payment app to become a one-stop application to disrupt banking apps.

PhonePe, acquired by Flipkart in April last year, is essentially a payment system riding on UPI. But now it plans to cross-sell financial products across spectrums.

PhonePe’s new plans do not come as a surprise. Over the past few months, two of the biggest payment companies in India, Paytm and MobiKwik, have talked about similar plans, laying the blueprint for their financial services division. Via yourstory.com

UK Android Pay Users Can Now Add American Express Cards

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/07/uk-android-pay-users-can-now-add-american-express-cards.htmlUK Android Pay users can now add American Express cards to the app for use with mobile payments at supported retailers and websites. That being said, there are AMEX cards which are and are not supported, so users will want to make note of that. Of the supported cards included are UK AMEX cards which are issued as personal cards or those which are issued as small business cards, as well as charge cards and corporate cards. Those that are not supported are pre-paid AMEX cards, virtual cards, corporate purchasing cards, and meeting cards.

UK users being able to add AMEX cards to Android Pay follows the ability for users in Canada to add AMEX cards to the app, which happened earlier this Summer, specifically back on June 28th. In addition to recently adding AMEX support in Canada and now in the UK, U.S. Android Pay users recently had the opportunity to start taking advantage of some new promotions that Google was offering for the service, allowing users to make purchases with Android Pay and receive special deals, such as $3 off a movie ticket when purchasing a ticket through Fandango with Android Pay, or $5 off your next three food orders through the DoorDash service. If you’re a user in the U.S. and want to add an American Express card to the app, AMEX cards have already been supported for some time and the only cards listed which aren’t compatible are prepaid cards. Via androidheadlines.com

EasyPark’s Find & Pay app could mean you NEVER need to hunt for free parking spaces again

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/3958654/easyparks-find-pay-app-could-end-the-hunt-for-a-free-parking-space-and-its-in-the-uk-next-year/DRIVERS waste 2,500 hours of their life searching for somewhere to park but a new app claims it can slash that in half. EasyPark’s Find & Pay app takes the strain off hunting for a space in busy city streets by predicting where there’s a free bay.

A “Find-o-meter” gives a graphical representation of the likelihood of finding a space in your chosen location. When you do find a spot, users are able to pay for parking and remotely top-up via the app so you don’t have to dash back to a meter to put more change in.

Find & Pay will be first introduced in Stockholm with roll out across more than 30 other major European cities later this year. An estimated 30 per cent of traffic in busy cities is caused by people searching for parking and it contributes 50 million tonnes of CO2 across Europe. Via thesun.co.uk

Restaurants find mobile apps are key as more people use delivery service

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/restaurants-find-mobile-apps-are-key-as-more-people-use-delivery-service-2017-07-05Chains from Panera to McDonald’s are using technology to grow their businesses during a sluggish time for restaurants. Convenience is a growing consideration for diners deciding where and what to have for dinner, a trend that is spurring restaurants to build or improve their mobile apps, experts say.

Data compiled by research firm The NPD Group found half of consumers who choose delivery do it because they don’t want to leave home. Other top answers were it’s “easier” or “quicker” than cooking.

The NPD Group said the use of mobile apps, text messages and the internet to order food from a restaurant or other food service provider climbed 18% in March from the previous year. Half of those orders were dinner orders made in the evening. People under the age of 35 and those with higher household incomes are “above-average users of digital ordering,” the organization said. Via marketwatch.com

Eftpos invites new payments competition with network infrastructure upgrade

http://www.zdnet.com/article/eftpos-invites-new-payment-competition-with-network-infrastructure-upgrade/Eftpos has announced the completion of its industry-wide technology infrastructure transformation program.

According to the payments giant, its new centralised payments hub — which has just processed its two billionth transaction — is expected to support the rollout of new Eftpos products and services, such as “Tap & Pay” and mobile pay.

In a statement, Eftpos managing director Bruce Mansfield said the centralised payments hub provides the national, cost-effective, and secure infrastructure the industry needs to be ready for the future. Via zdnet.com

‘Flexible Fitness’ App Lets Users Skip Gym Contracts and Pay By the Minute

A new app is letting you stop paying for gyms you never go to – while getting access to high-end, members-only workout spots. POPiN, which launches on July 17, lets users pay by the minute for time they use at the gym, skipping monthly fees, its founders said.

It’s aimed at travelers in need of a good sweat, for fitness buddies who don’t belong to the same gym and for locals with unpredictable schedules, according to POPiN CEO and co-founder Dalton Han.

POPiN partners with gyms willing to offer the service. Rates that each club charges will be posted on the app. When users arrive, they scan a code with their phone and the session begins. Via patch.com