ATLANTA, April 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- InComm, a leading prepaid product and transaction services company, announced today that InComm Japan is partnering with Tencent FiT (Financial Technology), the provider of WeChat Pay services and part of the Tencent group of companies headquartered in Shenzen, China.
WeChat Pay is a payment service for users of SNS "WeChat (Weixin)" that boasts more than 849 million monthly active users in China, handling more than 500 million transactions a day. The service is becoming one of the main streams of Chinese mobile payment methods. With this partnership, InComm's POSA technology1 will enable Chinese visitors in Japan to use their smartphone to pay for products and services, just as they already do in their home country.
InComm Japan's POSA network, which connects with more than 50,000 retail stores in the country, will facilitate customer purchases at the point of sale utilizing WeChat Pay issued barcodes. By leveraging this POSA technology, WeChat Pay customer account billing can be applied at the point of sale. This makes it unnecessary to set up a dedicated terminal and makes WeChat Pay services possible at all InComm retailers.
"We are pleased to announce our POSA technology is now available for alternative redemption purposes and very excited to have WeChat joining us," said Junichi Kito, Director of Business Development at InComm Japan. "In looking forward to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, it is critical for Japanese retailers to prepare for global payment methods, which are convenient for travelers, and it is our mission to support that. We believe this will bring a great additional value for retailers and prepaid issuers in the global market."
In 2016, the number of Chinese visitors to Japan exceeded 5 million, the largest number of tourists ever to visit the island nation. The type of travel undertaken is also shifting from group travel to personal travel, and travelers no longer visit only preplanned destinations. This new partnership will allow all retail stores, not just those which typically handle tax-free sales, to process payments through registers at the point of sale.
About InComm
Leveraging deep integrations into retailers' point-of-sale systems, InComm provides connectivity to a variety of service providers that allow consumers to conduct everyday business at more than 500,000 points of retail distribution. Whether those consumers are activating prepaid products, paying bills, enjoying real-time discounts through a membership card, purchasing digital goods in-store or adding funds to an online account, InComm is there to provide unique gift-gifting opportunities, cater to on-the-go shoppers, deliver added value through loyalty programs and serve cash-based consumers. With 206 global patents, InComm is headquartered in Atlanta with a presence in more than 30 countries. Learn more at www.incomm.com or connect with us on www.twitter.com/incomm, www.facebook.com/incomm, www.linkedin.com/company/incomm or www.incomm.com/blog.
About InComm Japan
InComm Japan is a Japanese subsidiary of the world's largest POSA card distributor headquartered in the United States. We have multiple patented technologies of POSA cards and we are deploying them to approximately 50,000 retail stores in Japan.
About Tencent (Tencent Holdings Limited)
Tencent is a publicly traded company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (company code: 00700) and is the largest company in China in terms of market capitalization in 2016 (1.608 trillion Chinese yuan).
1 In Japan, "POSA" and "POS Activation" are registered trademarks of InComm Japan.
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