Shopping without cash is a common style among many Chinese consumers. Credit goes to the wide acceptance of tap-and-go payment style via smartphone applications by the modern merchants. Nevertheless, this convenience gets problematic when they travel to other countries. However, this will soon be taken care of while traveling to US as Alipay, China’s mobile-payments king, declared on May 8 about a deal with Atlanta-based payments processor First Data which allows more than 4 million US merchants to accept payment via the service. This collaboration brings it in the same league as Apple Pay, which is at 4.5 million. But for Alipay, the primary target is not Americans. Their main focus is the increasing number of Chinese tourists and students in the United States.
As per the UN World Tourism Organization, in 2016, Chinese travelers spent more than $260 billion in abroad, making China the largest outbound market. Ever since 2004, China has shown double-digit boost in tourism expenditure year-on-year. According to the datas of the National Travel and Tourism Office, the United States received some 2.6 million Chinese visitors in 2015 and this figure is expected to reach 6 million by 2021, according to the US Travel Association
