China’s UnionPay Expands QuickPass Mobile Payments System to Canada [u]

China UnionPay’s subsidiary UnionPay International has announced today that it is expanding its HCE-based mobile payments system QuickPass to Canada.

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As noted by TechCrunch, UnionPay is actually the third-largest payment network globally, right behind Visa and Mastercard, and it is accepted broadly beyond China, where it originated. By stepping into Canada, UnionPay is expanding its QuickPass acceptance from the already decently high 220,000 point-of-sale terminals in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia.

As a first step, UnionPay says QuickPass will be accepted mainly at restaurants, hotels, retail outlets, supermarkets and convenience stores. Currently over 85% of the local ATMs and more than 70,000 merchants accept UnionPay cards, and dozens of the local educational institutions support cross-border online tuition payment via UnionPay cards, the press release reads.

UnionPay customers with QuickPass chip cards or mobile QuickPass-enabled smartphones such as Huawei, MI, ZTE, Lenovo and more, can pay at contactless terminals in Canada without the need for a signature if the value of the transaction is below CAD$100.

To date, UnionPay has issued over 2 billion chip cards worldwide and now over 7 million point-of-sale terminals accept QuickPass.

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