BestPay joins Macau’s online payment competition

BestPay, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Telecom, has just signed an agreement with a local e-commerce platform to be able to provide services in Macau, Chinese media reports say.

However, the payment service at the current stage, is only available for mainland users who travel to Macau.

The agreement will allow BestPay users to purchase products such as coupons through the e-commerce platform. Users can then use the e-coupons when they shop in Macau.

The first stage of this new addition includes approximately 10 members, consisting mainly of restaurants.

In the future, the service will be expanded to souvenir bakeries and ticketing offices.

Compared to other online payment platforms, BestPay believes that it has advantages over its competition. A representative of BestPay said that it “is not at the same level” as other platforms, and because of that, the company is not afraid of competition.

According to BestPay, it has currently nearly 400 million registered users in mainland China, of which more than 30 million are active users. It ranks second in terms of the mainland’s mobile payment applications, reporting noteworthy growth over its online presence at the start of last year.

“[By] January 2016, BestPay [had] attracted over 200 million users and became the third-largest payment platform operator in China, closely following Alipay and WeChat Payment,” the company’s webpage reads. JZ