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SINGAPORE, Sept. 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On September 21, 2022, Mastercard and TripLink announced the expansion of their partnership from Hong Kong to Asia Pacific, introducing a seamless and reliable cross-border payment experience for businesses to enhance travel recovery. TripLink can now issue virtual cards for its Asia Pacific businesses and suppliers especially in the tourism industry. As the sector is experiencing soaring B2B payment needs, sales are increasingly conducted in varying foreign currencies, the process has been simplified thanks to Mastercard's global network.
The agreement between Mastercard and TripLink, originally signed for local collaboration in 2019, has now been extended across the entire Asia Pacific region. The region-wide expansion provides businesses with faster, safer and more convenient cross-border transactions while consumers prepare to travel and transact overseas.
The partnership expansion launches amid a resurgence of cross-border business in the tourism industry, which has seen a sharp rebound in travel across Asia Pacific in 2022. A recent report by the Mastercard Economics Institute, Travel 2022: Trends and Transitions, highlighted the strength of pent-up demand, suggesting that if flight booking trends continue at the current pace, an estimated 430 million more passengers will fly in Asia Pacific compared to last year.
Wang Zhe, Chief Executive Officer, TripLink International, said, "The partnership between TripLink and Mastercard since 2019 has been a huge success, and we now look forward to deepening our collaboration in more aspects and regions! With an increasing number of consumers shifting to digital-first lifestyle and payment means, it is crucial for our corporate customers to cater to these emerging trends, and to improve their cross-border payment capability. To catch up with the evolving needs for a more seamless and secure payment experience, we will speed up the relevant development and try to gain mutual growth with our customers."
Dennis Chang, Executive Vice President and Division President of Greater China, Mastercard, said, "Mastercard is committed to supporting businesses across diverse industries by providing reliable, safe and secure cross-border payments in every possible way. Amid continued growth in the business-to-business payment market, Mastercard is collaborating with more enterprises to capture opportunities via its multi-rail strategy. This expanded partnership with TripLink reinforces this approach, and will further support the development of a more digital, sustainable and connected economy."
By providing highly customized services that offer both portal and API integration options for a seamless card management experience, the TripLink Mastercard solution addresses challenges such as lengthy and slow processing as well as high administrative fees. With the payment option provided by TripLink, merchants and suppliers are assured of having a smooth and user-friendly process from registration to application.
According to the Mastercard Borderless Payments Report, consumers and SMEs ranked personal and financial information security as their top consideration when choosing an online payment solution. TripLink prioritizes data security and compliance in light of these expanding expectations, and its partnership with Mastercard serves as evidence of this dedication to dependable, safe, and secure payments. In addition, through Mastercard's global payments network, merchants and suppliers can enjoy the same robust and multi-layered security protection that comes with any Mastercard payment solution.
TripLink is among the top virtual card issuers in Asia in terms of cross-border virtual card transaction volume. Most recently, TripLink has received the Highest Market Share Cross-border Commercial Card Spend Award and Highest Growth Commercial Card Spend Award in Hong Kong in 2021, presented by Mastercard. Since its partnership with Mastercard in 2019, both its gross merchandise volume and the number of its clients recorded triple-digit growth. Providing a highly stable solution and offering customized functions, the TripLink virtual card has been used in more than 100 countries and regions around the world, fully supporting the overseas payment needs of its parent company - Trip.com Group's partners, as well as China's overseas suppliers.
