Incredible rhythm! In Japan, you can use Alipay and WeChat to pay Bitcoin

Japanese bitcoin exchange Bitpoint announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Nippon Pay to provide cryptocurrency payment options for China’s three most popular payment services.

'World first'

On Wednesday, Bitpoint informed its clients that it had “accepted a commercial partnership with multi-payment method service provider Nippon Pay to deploy virtual currency settlement services.” With this partnership, China’s three major payment providers WeChat, Alipay, and UnionPay will be able to open Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) payment options on this new platform.

Bitpoint wrote:

In addition to Bitcoin settlement, we plan to start processing ETH store settlement services from August 2017.

Bitpoint calls this service a "world first" because it is the first time that Bitcoin and ETH have been integrated into a popular Chinese payment service. The company also said that this is the first time that ETH has entered Japan as a payment option. In an interview, the president of Nippon Pay further explained that their service is the first time in Japan that WeChat Pay and Alipay have been integrated into one application.

Nippon Pay, a Tokyo-based company that provides payment solutions to businesses focused on mobile payments in China, explained:

In addition to face-to-face mobile payments in physical stores, we also provide a variety of payment services from China's three major settlement service providers: WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay.

Nippon Pay users can make different types of payments through smartphone apps (Android and iOS). There are plans to launch two more payment platforms by the end of the year. One is Kakao Pay, the top mobile payment service in South Korea, and the other is Line Pay, the mobile payment platform with the largest user base in Thailand and Taiwan.

Nippon Pay, which integrates WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay with cryptocurrency payments, is designed specifically for Chinese tourists in Japan. According to Chinese travel service provider Ctrip, Japan is the third most popular tourist destination for Chinese tourists. Data collected by the Japan Tourism Agency showed that the number of Chinese tourists received by Japan reached 6.37 million last year, spending a total of 1.47 trillion yen.

UnionPay is the world's largest card payment organization. They operate under the license of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) and also provide mobile and online payments. Alibaba Group's Alipay and Tencent Group's WeChat Pay are the two major smartphone payment services in China. Payment technology platform Dlocal said that these three providers accounted for 70% of the Chinese payment market, and the total online payment volume of these major platforms reached about 2.9 trillion US dollars in 2016.

Bitpoint’s Plans for Bitcoin

The recent partnership with Nippon Pay is part of Bitpoint’s Bitcoin merchant program. In May, the company made headlines for partnering with Peach Aviation to provide Bitcoin services to the airline. Soon after, the company revealed that it was in talks with potential partners to add Bitcoin payments to more than 100,000 stores in Japan. Earlier this month, Bitpoint also announced a partnership with Japan’s largest online travel agency to bring Bitcoin payment services to more than 1,400 hotels this summer.