Welcome to The Axis, your late look at payments news from around the world. Coverage includes Motion Pay Technology Inc.’s tie-up with UnionPay International to offer quick-response (QR) payments in Canada. uBUCK Technologies, a subsidiary of Canada’s LiteLink Technologies Inc., is intending to work with Datable Technology Corp. for a loyalty offering, and cash transactions are still popular in Vietnam when compared to other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.
Cross-border mobile payment solution provider Motion Pay Technology Inc. (Motion Pay) is teaming up with UnionPay International to offer QR code payments across Canada, according to reports. In order to make a payment, consumers can add their UnionPay cards to a mobile app and tap “Pay and Receive” to allow the cashier to scan a QR code or scan a retailer’s QR code signage. Motion Pay President and Chief Operating Officer Eric Paquet said, according to the report, “We believe this partnership will definitely benefit both parties by reaching more Canadian merchants and ultimately facilitate the shopping and payment experience for Chinese consumers.”
And in other Canadian payment news, LiteLink Technologies Inc.’s wholly-owned subsidiary uBUCK Technologies SEZC has inked a letter of intent (LOT) with Datable Technology Corp., according to a press release. With the LOI’s terms, uBUCK plans to integrate the PLATFORM loyalty and rewards program from Datable into the uBUCK digital payments platform. With this arrangement, uBUCK Pay account holders would be able to earn rewards for payments as well as purchases made on their uBUCK cards and their digital wallets. “The uBUCK Pay platform will see immediate growth,” uBUCK CEO James Youn said in the press release. “Datable’s referrals will allow uBUCK to potentially gain access to millions of new users.”
In Asia, cash transactions are still very popular in Vietnam in comparison to other ASEAN countries due to its low banking penetration, VN Express reported. According to a Standard Chartered report cited by the news outlet, Vietnam credit card ownership is comprised of only 4.1 percent of the population in comparison to Thailand’s 9.8 percent. And the country’s debit card ownership ratio is 26.8 percent compared to Malaysia at 73.8 percent and Indonesia at 30.9 percent. At the same time, only 3.5 percent of the Vietnamese population has a mobile money account. The outlet also pointed out that 90.2 percent of eCommerce purchases happen via cash.
