With 83% of passengers travelling with them, mobile devices are an essential part of the travel journey today. More and more travellers are using mobile devices to pay for travel-related services and an increasing number of service providers are implementing mobile payment options to help travellers pay for the travel products and services they use. This report, published in collaboration with U.S.- Asia Center for Tourism & Hospitality Research at Temple University in the USA, provides an overview of mobile payment in Travel & Tourism complete with results of a detailed survey of outbound Chinese travellers – leaders in their desire to use mobile payment.

For many travel service providers around the globe, Asia is an extremely important source market and China continues to rank as the number one country in outbound travel expenditure. At the same time, as smartphone penetration grows and mobile payment gain ground throughout the world, Asia-Pacific, and notably China, have emerged as clear market leaders. Over 60% of all global mobile payment users are Chinese and Alipay and WeChat Pay dominate the overseas mobile travel payment market. 

Despite the growth mobile payment services are not perfect. With focused survey data on Chinese outbound travellers, this research looks at what consumers want as well as what is needed from both travel and mobile pay service providers and from policy makers.