微信支付首次登陸英國

In an alleyway in London’s Camden Market, a woman in ripped black jeans and fingerless gloves fiddles with an iPad screen. Like most shopkeepers in this area, Emma Peonia usually sells clothes to tattooed youngsters paying with debit cards or cash but, for the first time, she is using a Chinese payments app to sell an Iron Maiden T-shirt.

在倫敦卡姆登市場(Camden Market，見文首照片)的一條巷子裏，一名身着黑色破洞牛仔褲、手戴露指手套的女性在iPad屏幕上不停擺弄。和這裏的大多數店主一樣，埃瑪?皮奧尼亞(Emma Peonia)通常把衣服賣給文身的年輕人，他們用借記卡或者現金支付。但現在，她第一次用一款中國支付應用來賣一件Iron Maiden樂隊T恤衫。

“My boss thought it would be useful — she has just created a new website,” she says. “She wants to sell more to Chinese tourists.”

“我的老闆覺得這會派上用場——她剛剛建了一個新網站。”皮奧尼亞說，“她想把更多商品賣給中國遊客。”

WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app owned by technology group Tencent, launched its payment service, WeChat Pay, in the UK on Wednesday. It is hoping that more shops like Ms Peonia’s will use it to target Chinese consumers, who last year spent ￡513m in the UK, according to Visit Britain, the tourism body.

中國科技集團騰訊旗下廣受歡迎的消息應用微信(WeChat)本週三在英國推出了微信支付(WeChat Pay)服務。微信希望有更多店鋪能像皮奧尼亞的店鋪那樣，使用微信支付來吸引中國消費者。根據旅遊機構Visit Britain的統計，去年中國消費者在英國花費了5.13億英鎊。

As part of a modernisation push by its owners, Camden Market will ask more than 1,000 shops and restaurants to sign up to the app over the next four months, so that people with Chinese bank accounts linked to WeChat can shop in the market using their smartphones.

卡姆登市場將要求逾1000家商店和餐廳在接下來4個月裏與微信簽訂合作協議，這樣微信上綁定了中國的銀行賬戶的人就能使用智能手機在卡姆登市場購物。這是卡姆登市場的所有者推動該市場現代化的一部分。

The idea is to replicate a system that Alipay, the rival Chinese payment app, has already implemented in the Harrods and Selfridges department stores. “In terms of the Chinese market it just offers a very good opportunity to us,” said Ceri Davies, operations director at Camden Market. “They’re currently super attracted by the likes of Selfridges and Harrods and the more ways there are of paying, the better.”

這是爲了複製微信支付的對手支付寶(Alipay)在哈羅德百貨(Harrods)和塞爾福裏奇百貨(Selfridges)鋪設的支付系統。“在中國消費者市場方面，這給了我們絕佳的機會。”卡姆登市場的運營總監凱里?戴維斯(Ceri Davies)說，“他們現在很受像塞爾福裏奇百貨和哈羅德百貨這樣的購物場所吸引，支付方式越多越好。”

Tencent has already rolled out its payment platform — known in China as WeixinPay — around the world but this is its first foray into the UK. It is mainly targeting Chinese tourists, who can use their phones to pay while on holiday.

騰訊已經在全球各地推廣其支付平臺微信支付，但這是其首次進軍英國。微信支付在英國主要面向中國遊客，這樣他們就可以在度假時使用手機支付。

It launched its payments system a decade after Alipay — which is run by Ant financial, an affiliate of Tencent’s biggest rival, Alibaba — but has since taken a 37 per cent slice of China’s market. The WeChat messaging app is ubiquitous in the country and has 980m monthly active users around the world. Users outside the home markets are mainly overseas Chinese or those with business or other connections in the mainland, for whom it is often the only way to communicate.

騰訊推出微信支付的時間要比支付寶晚10年，但自推出以來微信支付已佔據中國市場37%的份額。支付寶的運營者則是騰訊最大的競爭對手之一阿里巴巴(Alibaba)旗下的關聯公司螞蟻金服(Ant financial)。作爲一款消息應用，微信在國內得到廣泛使用，其在世界範圍內的月度活躍用戶數量達到9.8億。中國市場以外的微信用戶主要是海外的中國人，以及與中國內地有商業或其他往來的人士。對後者而言，微信通常是與內地聯繫的唯一方式。

“Our primary focus is to better serve Chinese outbound tourists,” Tencent said.

騰訊表示：“我們的首要重點是更好地服務中國的出境遊客。”

WeChat’s messaging service is one of a number of rivals to more popular services, such as WhatsApp.

微信的消息服務是WhatsApp等更受歡迎的消息服務的競爭對手之一。

In Camden Market, shops that use WeChat will spend between 0.6 per cent and 2 per cent on commissions to SafeCharge, the London-listed payments company that will handle the transactions with Tencent. For smaller shops the costs will be greater than the 1.35 per cent paid to iZettle, the payments provider but, according to David Avgi, chief executive of SafeCharge, the idea is for shops to build their reputations with Chinese shoppers.

在卡姆登市場，使用微信支付的店鋪需要向倫敦上市支付公司SafeCharge支付0.6%到2%的佣金，SafeCharge將處理與騰訊的交易。對於規模較小的店鋪而言，使用微信支付的佣金花費會超過支付服務提供商iZettle向它們收取的1.35%的佣金費率。但SafeCharge首席執行官戴維?阿夫吉(David Avgi)表示，使用微信支付是爲了讓這些店鋪在中國購物者中建立聲譽。

“For some of the retailers it’s a very attractive market, Chinese shoppers or foreigners sending money to Chinese accounts,” he said. “The plan is not just Camden. Selfridges, Harrods, they’re all next.”

“對一些零售商而言，這是一個非常有吸引力的市場:中國消費者或者向中國賬戶匯款的外國人。”他說，“這個計劃不僅關乎卡姆登。塞爾福裏奇百貨和哈羅德百貨，它們都在計劃的下一步中。”

Currently, 10 per cent of Camden Market’s visitors are Chinese but the figure has grown rapidly, says Mr Davies. The proportion in September last year was only 5 per cent.

卡姆登市場的運營總監戴維斯表示，目前到訪卡姆登市場的遊客中有10%是中國人，這個比例經歷了快速增長。去年9月這個比例僅爲5%。

Some shopkeepers are sceptical: “I’ve never heard of anyone coming and asking to pay by WeChat,” says Davey, who works in a fashion boutique in Camden market. “To be honest there aren’t even so many Chinese people here and, if there are and we tell them we don’t have something, they would find another way to pay.”

一些店主抱懷疑態度：“我從來沒聽說有人走進店裏要求用微信支付。”在卡姆登市場的一家時尚精品店工作的戴維(Davey)說，“老實說，這兒都沒有那麼多中國人，就算有，如果我們告訴他們我們沒有某種支付方式，他們會用別的方式支付。”