Mainland China is witnessing a rapid expansion in its mobile payment market as mobile payment values more than tripled last year compared with 2012. Alipay has become the biggest mobile payment company in the world, according to the statistics released last month. With Tencent jumping into the war by offering payment services through its popular mobile messaging application WeChat this month, the competition is going to intensify this year.
Compared with Mainland China, the mobile payments competition in Hong Kong seemed mild. However, changes are happening. Hang Seng Bank in June launched a NFC mobile payment service last year, Hong Kong Association of Banks issued Best Practice on NFC mobile payment, aiming to build a solid foundation for the wide acceptance of NFC mobile payment services and enhance public confidence. The city is ready.
Nicholas Lee, Head of Emerging Products & Innovation – Visa Hong Kong, will talk about omni-channel commerce evolution in Hong Kong in his presentation at Cartes Asia’s "Innovative Commerce in Asia" conference on 20 March. Retail in Asia caught up with Lee to learn more about the current trends in mobile payment and where it’s going.
RIA: What are the current trends in mobile payment?
Nicholas Lee (NL): We are beginning to see real traction in mobile payment in Hong Kong and rest of the region. 2013 was the year of laying the ground work for mobile payment and developing relevant infrastructure by mobile handset manufacturers, Mobile Operators & Financial Institutions. Today, almost all of the new premium android phones are shipped with NFC chip, most of the mobile network operators (MNOs) are implementing their mobile payment services & many of the leading financial institutions (FIs) in the region have announced or launched mobile payment pilots.
In 2014, some of the groundwork that was done in 2013 will begin to materialise in terms of commercial launch. Visa is working with all the key stakeholders to ensure mobile payments are processed in secure, reliable & scalable environment by leveraging existing Visa payWave infrastructure with its global acceptance & interoperability with mobile NFC.
RIA: How do you think mobile payment will evolve in the next several years?
NL: The technology is constantly evolving as consumers, merchants & issuers continue to develop new use cases for mobile payment. We believe once the payment function is developed, the next logical step is the development of value-added benefits to mobile payment.
We are already seeing this in HK: a leading MNO & FI in HK released a wallet at the end of 2013 that featured the next generation of mobile payment, including location based coupons and event-triggered offers. We are also seeing secure elements moving to the cloud & greater emphasis on payment security.
Visa is both a supporter and participant in this evolution. For example, Visa recently announced our support for cloud-based payment and has been part of the industry consortium that is working on global tokenization standards. Visa believes that innovation occurs in open & interoperable infrastructure and we will continue to work with FIs, merchants & technology service providers to support the next round of innovation.
RIA: You are going to join Cartes Asia’s conference, what top tips are you going to share with attendees at your presentation "Omni-channel commerce Evolution in Hong Kong"?
NL: We will seek to "de-mystify" the technology of omni-commerce by framing the discussion from consumer’s point of view and how Visa’s open platform approach encourages innovation and experimentation in digital commerce.
Visa is focused on applied innovation, conducting research in leading-edge technology, incubating new ideas to help move the world’s economies to secure, digital commerce. We will discuss our evolving standards and capabilities of Visa’s global processing network to enable a world that increasingly relies on mobile devices to shop, pay and get paid.