As a startup founder (in my second innings now), I recall hearing what can’t be done (because of some archaic regulation or protectionist policy) more often than what is allowed under the rule of law. Sometimes, these chains weigh in on the mind so much that they prevent innovation and original thinking, and at best, your idea becomes a ‘me too’ of a global precedent in your chosen field (which investors seem to love, by the way).

Although still figuring out the right way to innovate at my new venture (within the rule of law), I’m glad it has nothing to do with anything I’ve done in the past and I’m happy to get to work every day to try and challenge (read trying to circumvent) most guidelines that have been made by the authorities in some of the most heavily regulated industries (Foreign Exchange, Insurance & Telecom) we have in India and also across the world.

Multiple times, I’ve seen global startups popping up in various countries evangelizing an innovation that we had to abandon because of a certain regulation, only to feel good about being on the right track and thinking that our time too shall come.

These are times in the developing world where one tends to leapfrog from Innovation A straight away to Innovation C (like we did in India from Desktop to Mobile, skipping laptops), changing behaviors and creating a massive impact like never before. From spending about USD 1000 on a desktop 10 years back, one can get a more powerful smartphone now within USD 100 (well, USD 4 if we talk about Ringing Bells!). Imagine all that computing power in a six billion palms worldwide in a few years.

India is a billion mobile phone user market, but think about how many Indian firms were able to take advantage of this? Had the Indian electronic manufacturing sector been able to grow to fulfil the needs of the Indian consumer, Apple would already be manufacturing in India and they’d do it out of simple economic considerations (right now, we’re bending backwards to try and get them to come, but they politely decline each time because our current eco system won’t be able to cater to their needs).

A similar leapfrogging is quite possible in currencies, heck, it’s already happening, India and Africa are skipping plastic and straight away going from cash to digital (hello, Bitcoin!) on a massive scale (recall the PayTM karo ads for making payments to the local kirana and the auto-wallah)! While we can think about our wallets (and all that plastic) going away, one can hardly fathom the thought of parting with their phone. This emotion portends the future quite tellingly and it’s just a matter of time when we’ll be using our phones to pay at NFC (or some other cool sounding wireless tech) enabled POS terminals at retail stores around us, using the in-built (Aadhar linked?) fingerprint scanner for authentication instead of the somewhat cumbersome OTP/ PIN based authentication we currently have.

As a startup operating in this space, we keenly look out for developments on currency regulation and although UPI will be a big game changer on the payments front (kudos to the RBI for taking the lead on that), in the currencies space, what will decide whether the next blockchain/ currency startup will be founded in New Delhi or London won’t be the availability of the talent pool, but the policy route taken by the lawmakers and how heavy (or light) they’d keep the regulations for such digital transactions. The decision to be made is whether we want to encourage building a nation of innovators and challengers of status quo, or are we simply going to wait patiently for a disruptor from the west (or shall I say, knight in shining armour) to come and give them a ready market of a billion people on a platter. The time is NOW…

Author

Rishabh Sood, CEO & Co-founder @YuMiGo, is currently working on his second venture which is at core a travel tech startup with a strong fintech angle. He completed his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and Master’s in Financial Engineering from NYU Tandon as an Honors Student before moving back to his hometown of New Delhi. Post NYU, he started off in a space that was very close to his heart and built a venture in renewables, scaling up to revenues of USD 2 million and a team of 50, before deciding to move on due to heavy capital requirements and very little differentiation from the competition, searching for a space where he could make a 10x impact.

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Alipay has struck a partnership deal with PAYSBUY, a leading online payment provider in Thailand with over 15,000 merchants and a worldwide trusted SSL security technology to allow mobile payment services for all the Chinese tourists visiting Thailand to conveniently pay in yuan via Alipay.

The number of Chinese tourists has significantly grown with about 8 million people hitting Thailand soil last year. The capacity with which an individual Chinese spend grosses up to Bt6000 on goods and services which sum up that they possess a strong spending power over other nationals. And since most of them use Alipay on a regular basis, this could be considered as a good opportunity for the online payment provider to scale its business across mainland China. Panthep Nilasinthop, senior vice President – Head of Financial Services & Innovation Division, Total Access Communication PLC or dtac feels that this way both the organisations would contribute towards a cashless society in Thailand.

PAYSBUY has partnered with Alipay to expand mobile payment services for Chinese tourists visiting or living in Thailand and launched PAYSBUY and Alipay Online-to-Online (O2O) service that integrates Alipay mobile online payment service into their system, which enables the merchants and businesses to conveniently accept online payments for goods and services in yuan from their Chinese customers.

“We are pleased to announce our partnership with Alipay. PAYSBUY is Thailand’s leading online payment service, with over 15,000 merchants and growing. PAYSBUY provides a variety of digital payment channels to allow both and international payments, including credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, JCB, AMEX, and Union Pay), Internet banking, cash, instalments, e-wallet, and mPOS. Additionally, PAYSBUY uses secure and trustworthy SSL technology that is widely accepted around the world for online payments and continues to develop new technology to protect customer data, making our system as secure as leading commercial banks’ Internet banking services,” said Panthep.

According to Panda Jia, senior director of Alipay International, Ant Financial Services Group says that Alipay has over 450 million active users. Over 10 million Chinese tourists are expected to travel to Thailand in 2016.

More than 70,000 overseas retailers use Alipay out of which 10,000 are in Thailand. This platform connects the merchants and the Chinese customers.

“We have a full confidence in PAYSBUY that we have integrated their merchant payment gateway into Alipay to allow Chinese tourists who have active Alipay accounts to pay for goods and services via Alipay mobile application – as conveniently here as in China,” said Jia.

The service is now available at 4 branches of King Power in order to provide a convenient payment option to Chinese customers who could pay in yuan. The partnership would enhance the experience of the visiting and living Chinese community in Thailand and would allow PAYSBUY to bring its payment services to retail merchants serving Chinese tourists.

Source: The Nation

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Phocuswright India day 2 opened with Phocuswright Senior Research Analyst Maggie Rauch’s research spotlight on how China is emerging as an outbound market for APAC in the travel industry. Her insights majorly focused on the country’s growing ability to create disruption in the industry and trends that would put not only China but the entire Asia-Pacific in the fast lane to evolution in travel.

China’s outbound travel market has seen some phenomenal changes in the past year. Due to revised government policies, the travellers made it to destinations like the US, the UK, Israel, Egypt etc. Last year an estimated 120 million outbound trips generated a whooping sum of USD2.6 billion as a revenue for the entire industry. Certain observations and trends have started to see us in the face while China travels. Let’s hear what Phocuswright has to say.

Where did they book?

The most important fact that stands right in front is where did the Chinese travellers book from. It was observed that the most of the travellers booked with their domestic OTAs. Platforms like Ctrip, Alitrip are the domestic players that boomed heir businesses because of these trends. Chinese are comfortable in booking from these players which comes as a challenge to the outside China platforms to penetrate in the homeland market.

Who travelled a lot?

The younger generation has the capability of spending comfortably as much as the elders. They are the ones who come with a different psychology then the older generation. They travel frequently and are ready for different travel experiences. This generation will be a look out for any trend that the industry embraces.

Mobile penetration

China is a huge market for mobile operations, so much so that this industry might saturate in near future. Speaking for now, majority of bookings that were done to with respect to travel related purposes were on the mobile platform. The millennials purchased mostly on the mobile platform giving it an edge over the desktop version.

Alternative payments

There was a surge of alternate ways to pay up as the country is opening to new arenas. With mobile platform gaining grounds in Chinese market, alternate payments have made their way into the ecosystem. Platforms like WeChat payments and Alipay were certain choices that rose up in methods to pay alternatively after credit card.

However, it was noticed that the sharing economy model might take some time to seep into the ecosystem or perhaps it wasn’t something that the Chinese would be interested in. These trends are going to be the way forward for the outbound travel in the Chinese market. Let’s hope that the inbound market opens freely as well.

The post Is China finally ready to travel? appeared first on TravHQ.

Apple Pay, a mobile payment and digital wallet service by Apple Inc will be available in China from tomorrow (18^th February) for customers of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Apple has already partnered with UnionPay and multiple other leading banks like ABC, CCB and CMB. In totality, 19 banks are on-board.

Greater China is Apple’s second-largest market by revenue. According to China Internet Network Information Center, by the end of 2015, 358 million people – more than the population of USA – had already taken to paying by smartphones. In this region, Apple can face a stiff competition against the Alibaba’s AliPay and WeChat’s Wallet. AliPay is the preferred option for online payments and WeChat’s wallet offers a convenient mode of payment for a variety of purchases.

At an international level, Apple Pay has already been introduced in USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain. Apple has had troubles associating with banks in some countries. For example, as per the report, four Australian banks have resisted to collaborate with the brand. Similarly, in Britain, Apple faced a hitch from big banks over fees before relenting. As a result of this, the company has chosen to partner exclusively with American Express in many countries. Elaborating on the positive aspect, it can be assumed that Apple shares a good relationship with Chinese marketers. Unlike PayPal, Apple has managed to obtain the license without any complication. Also, Apple Pay might soon launch in France. Outside of China, Apple faces competition from Samsung’s mobile payment service called Samsung Pay. It runs on a different technology and can see better adoption by merchants. However Apple is moving quickly and taking head start in many markets.

The video by TechCrunch below is worth a watch!

Apple Pay has a great potential in almost all sectors of travel. The payment process will be much simpler now, thereby increasing conversions. This product can easily store the debit/credit card details of the users. This facilitates carrying out online transactions with absolute ease. Consequently, there can be a significant increase in mobile bookings. Travellers can use Apple Pay every time they feel the need to pull out their card for payments.

To read more details on Apple Pay and other mobile payments systems, click here.

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With the latest iOS rolling out to devices, Apple announced their new payment system, Apple Pay. This new mobile based payment system would allow users to pay for various services using their mobile device. Apple pay uses the NFC technology built into the iPhone (only the latest iPhones) to pay from one of your saved credit cards. While we have seen many companies give mobile payments a try in the past, none of them were very successful. This might change with Apple entering the arena as they seem to have done their homework properly. Apple Pay clearly has the potential to change the way travellers pay for things.

Apple is not the only player making a move in this segment. Their Korean rivals have also introduced Samsung Pay with their latest devices, Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. If we believe the rumours, there is a revamped Google Wallet in works as well (Update-Android Pay has been announced at the Google I/O and will be arriving soon). Microsoft is also working on their mobile payment platform which should come out with the Windows 10 for phones. But for now, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are making the news.

What is Apple Pay?

If you have got an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, you can store you debit and credit cards in the Passbook app and use them to make payments. These payments could either be in app payments (for apps that support apple pay) or at physical stores that are set up for NFC payments. It reduces the friction at a payment gateway and the transaction can be authenticated by simply placing a finger on the home key. For now it is available in US only and we don’t see it coming to India anytime soon.

How is Samsung Pay different?

This was the biggest question when Samsung announced its mobile payment system. While Apple has already partnered with more banks and credit card companies, Samsung uses a technology which is compatible with older magnetic payment systems as well. Samsung acquired LoopPay earlier and have included their Magnetic Secure Transmission technology in the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. It allows the device to fool magnetic card reader into registering a digital signal as a card swipe. It supports NFC payments as well for modern payment systems wherever available. Authentication is using fingerprint like Apple Pay. It will launch in US and South Korea first followed by Europe and China.

Google Wallet didn’t take off. What is different now?

Google came up with the idea of NFC payments a few years back but there weren’t many NFC devices back then. On top of that, NFC payment gateways are costly to set up and retailers weren’t ready to put a lot of money on them until there was a big enough user base. A new technology like this needs to be heavily marketed. It is also important to tell people that it is secure and has got some serious advantages over conventional methods. Apple Pay is already associated with some major banks and credit card companies which is working in its favour. A lot of people remember Google Wallet now because Apple has made a move in the field. It is also simpler to pay using Apple Pay. A simple tap on home key and done. No PIN or password to bother about.

While Apple will get the boost due to good marketing, we think Samsung will also be received well because of the MST technology being supported widely. It is supported at 90 percent retail locations in US already. While the fingerprint authentication on Samsung S5 or Note 4 wasn’t as good as Touch ID, the S6 is able to match the level making the process just as smooth.

What about security?

Both the systems claim to be very secure as they use tokenized payment methods. It is somewhat like the virtual debit cards some banks allow you to generate for a transaction and the actual card details aren’t shared with the seller. In this case, your actual card details aren’t saved on your device either. The card details are stored on card provider’s secure server and they will handle the tokenisation in most cases. Even if someone gets the token details, it is useless for them without the fingerprint authentication. This actually makes it more secure than swiping your debit card.

What would be the impact on travel brands?

Payment systems like Samsung Pay and Apple Pay have got great potential in almost all sectors of travel. They will reduce the friction in payment process increasing conversions. It is annoying to type in your credit card details on the tiny mobile screen. Even if the booking app allows you to save the card details, there are other steps involved in the final payment. Apple Pay can save all that trouble and increase the number of mobile bookings. OpenTable, Priceline and HotelTonight have already rolled out Apple Pay support and others are going to follow soon. JetBlue has announced that they will allow inflight purchases using Apple Pay. Almost every point where you have to pull out your credit card can make use of the technology.

Early verdict

At this point, Apple Pay seems to have the advantage of a head start but Samsung Pay has got good potential. Both the technologies require Apple and Samsung’s latest flagship devices and judging by the numbers we have seen in past, Apple Pay is likely to reach more audience. These two systems will play a major role in where the mobile payments go next.

What is your opinion about these payment systems? How is the travel industry going to receive them? Share you view with us in comments below.

Update-Google announced the successor to Google Wallet and it is called Android Pay. It functions in a similar fashion as the Apple Pay and will be available to US residents in a few months.

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