Princess Cruises announced that Chinese passengers aboard Ruby Princess are now able to utilize both Alipay and WeChat Pay payments while shopping in the ship's boutiques.
This makes Princess the first and the only cruise company to offer both Alipay and WeChat Pay payment options aboard a passenger ship in North America.
Alipay and WeChat Pay are top-two popular forms of digital payment in China. Alipay is country’s most popular lifestyle platform and digital wallet service. It is currently expanding to in-store, offline payments inside and outside of China.
The in-store payment service of Alipay covers more than 40 countries and regions across the globe. Currently, more than 900 million people globally use this system for digital transactions.
WeChat Pay is another mobile payment app and digital wallet service in China that is widely used. It currently has 800 million monthly active users around the world and total volume in 2017 of around 6.5 trillion USD.
Travelers first used the digital payment platforms of WeChat Pay and Alipay in The Shops of Princess aboard Majestic Princess, which is the first luxury cruise vessel tailor-made for the Chinese cruise market in 2017 during the ship’s summer deployment in Shanghai.