Tourists from Hong Kong and Thailand travelling between the two countries will now be able to use their domestic real-time settlement payment systems to pay for their purchases, as authorities seek to speed up digital transformation and increase business opportunities for local vendors.
These systems, which link traditional banks and electronic payment and digital wallet operators, will allow visitors to make cross-border retail payments in a quick and user-friendly way, bankers said.
There are plans to raise the maximum daily limit in future depending on the utilisation situation, Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), said on Thursday.
Thailand is among the most popular tourist destinations for Hong Kong residents, and has extensive experience in cross-border linkages of faster payment systems, Lee said.
HSBC and Bangkok Bank are the settlement banks for linkage between the cross-border payment systems.
Hong Kong retail sales rise by 5.6% in October, amid continued tourism revival
Hong Kong retail sales rise by 5.6% in October, amid continued tourism revival
“Our well-established payment infrastructure will facilitate the end-to-end experience of this milestone expansion of FPS beyond Hong Kong,” Luanne Lim, chief executive of HSBC Hong Kong said in a statement on Thursday.
“Since the launch of FPS five years ago, HSBC has been promoting the wider adoption of this payment infrastructure. In the first half of 2023, we have witnessed over 40 per cent growth year-on-year in merchant transaction volume through FPS,” Lim added.
Seven banks and two stored value facility (SVF) operators will be served under the agreement on the Hong Kong side, including HSBC, Bank of China Hong Kong, Hang Seng Bank, Bank of East Asia, Citibank Hong Kong, Bank of Communications Hong Kong, Fubon Bank, Octopus Cards Limited and HKT Payment.
The collaboration marks a first step to interconnecting the real-time payment systems in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Stephen Chan, deputy chief executive of Bank of China Hong Kong, said in a statement.
“Connecting the two systems will not only provide more convenient cross-border payment methods for customers in the region, but will also accelerate digital transformation in the consumer sector and create new business opportunities for local merchants,” Chan said.
Five Thai banks, covering around 90 per cent of PromptPay merchants, will participate by supporting those who accept payments from Hong Kong tourists who scan PromptPay QR codes, HKMA said.
Hong Kong tourists can use their smartphones for FPS payments that will be based on real time foreign exchange rates, with customer banks and SVF operators providing competitive rates, it added.
PromptPay covers 8.5 million merchants in Thailand, with a daily average of 55 million transactions registered in 2022.
Hong Kong’s FPS, launched by the HKMA in September 2018, allows registered users to transfer money between different banks with the use of a simple identifier, such as a phone number. The system, which allows multiple registrations, had 12.6 million registrations as of June, and covers 50,000 merchants in the city, according to the HKMA.
Thailand, received an average of 900,000 visitors annually from Hong Kong in the five years to 2019, before the pandemic. There were more than 500,000 Thai tourists visiting Hong Kong annually on average, in recent years.