UnionPay International announced today its cooperation with Metrobank, the second largest acquirer in the Philippines, in enabling all the merchants of Metrobank to accept UnionPay cards by the end of September 2017, and all these merchants will support UnionPay mobile QuickPass contactless payments too. So far, all the three major acquirers in the Philippines have launched UnionPay acceptance business. Previously, all the local ATMs have accepted UnionPay, and now UnionPay’s merchant acceptance coverage will be further increased.

China has become the second largest trade partner and the third largest tourist source country for the Philippines. Last year, the number of Chinese tourists going to the Philippines grew by 38% year-on-year. With the improvement of the Sino-Philippines relations, several airlines in mainland China have launched direct flights to the Philippines. The Philippine Department of Tourism plans to grant visa-upon-arrival to Chinese tourists this year with a goal of attracting one million Chinese tourists.

As the second largest acquirer in the Philippines, Metrobank has enabled all of its ATMs to accept UnionPay cards. This time, UnionPay International and Metrobank expand their scope of cooperation: First, to enable all the Bank’s merchants across the Philippines to accept UnionPay cards. These merchants are mainly food-and-beverage merchants and supermarkets. This will effectively improve UnionPay Cardholders’ payment experiences in the country. Second, all the POS terminals of Metrobank will be enabled to accept UnionPay contactless payment, laying a solid foundation for the introduction of more innovative products and services from Union Pay in the Philippines in the future. 

President of China UnionPay Shi Wenchao and senior management of Metrobank exchanged opinions on how to further deepen the cooperation  and reached broad consensus. Shi Wenchao said, we have realized comprehensive cooperation with the mainstream acquirers in the Philippines. The continuous optimization of UnionPay’s acceptance environment not only provides better payment services to the visiting cardholders, but also helps to  accelerate the localization of UnionPay’s business. Next, we will explore cooperation opportunities in innovative products and services, in order to continue offering safe and flexible mobile payment solutions and jointly improve UnionPay’s service capacity to various groups of customers. According to Metrobank, the launch of this acceptance project will bring more convenient and secure payment experiences to both the locals and tourists visiting the Philippines, hence bringing more customers to the merchants and achieve a win-win situation. Metrobank is willing to continue deepening its corporation with UnionPay in a broader scope.

At present, cardholders can use UnionPay cards at over 36 million merchants and 2 million ATMs across 160 countries and regions. UnionPay cards are accepted and issued in all the ten ASEAN countries, where about 500,000 merchants and 200,000 ATMs in the region accept UnionPay. In the region, UnionPay’s overall acceptance coverage is over 70%. In Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, UnionPay’s overall acceptance coverage is over 90%.