Hong Kong’s JETCO latest to offer cashless payments with smartphone-based platform
City has been slow to adopt electronic payment systems, unlike the boom in mainland China
Hong Kong cash machine network operator Joint Electronic Teller Services (JETCO) has joined the rush of companies offering cashless payments with the launch on Thursday of a smartphone-based merchant payment system.
Customers will be able to pay retailers with their smartphones by scanning QR codes, a feature of mainland competitors Alipay and WeChat Pay, which dominate the mobile payment market in China.
JETCO’s platform joins old-fashioned credit cards, the prepaid Octopus card, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay as well as the mainland Chinese operators in an increasingly crowded cashless payment world in Hong Kong. The company had already launched a peer-to-peer money transfer service in April 2016.
“We want to achieve a cashless society in Hong Kong by penetrating the small cash-and-cheque stores, which still represent 40 per cent of the city’s shops, such as cha chaan teng [tea restaurants],” said Angus Choi, chief executive officer of JETCO.
Hong Kong lags behind mainland China in the adoption of cashless payment methods, in part because of a higher percentage of credit card holders in the city and the popularity of the Octopus card among retailers.
“It’s going to take a while,” Choi said. “The key priority is to educate Hong Kong consumers in using cashless payment methods.”