The indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, Macau Pass, is a leading payment service provider in Macau and is an “other credit institution” licensed under AMCM. It is principally engaged in payment card and ancillary services, e-wallet services and acquiring services.

Payment card services and ancillary services

The Macau Pass Card is the most common contactless smart card for payments in Macau. There are currently more than 4.5 million cumulative MP Cards in issuance. The MP Card can be used for bus fare payments, payments for other public transports, car parks, government services, retail consumption, food and beverage services. Starting from May 24, 2022, passengers of the Macau’s Light Rail Transit can also use their MP Cards for fare payment. The MP Card can also be customized to include functions such as door access card, staff badge or membership card. Macau Pass receives commission income from merchants for processing transactions with payments made via MP Cards, and also generates revenue from ancillary card services such as sales and management of MP Cards.

In order to stimulate domestic demand and ease financial pressure faced by local residents and businesses, the government of Macau has launched a third round of “Electronic Consumption Benefits Plan” which ran from June 1, 2022 to February 28, 2023, entitling each qualified Macau resident to receive a start-up fund of MOP5,000 and a discount grant of MOP3,000 through one of the eight locally-registered mobile payment platforms (including MPay) or the electronic consumption card. The government of Macau has further announced an additional living subsidy start-up fund of MOP8,000, which will run from October 28, 2022 to June 30, 2023.

Macau Pass continues to support and promote the latest round of economic aid through its three customer service centers by providing assistance to services such as registration and activation. An increase of approximately 25% on active card usage was observed during the month of launch of the third round of “Electronic Consumption Benefits Plan”.

E-wallet services

The Group provides e-wallet services via a mobile app called “MPay”, which supports online and offline payments covering different payment scenarios such as person-to-person transfer, telecommunication and utility bill payment, online ticketing, payment of car parking fees and payment of bus fares using QR code. MPay is also allowed by the People’s Bank of China for offline cross-border use in the PRC. The Group receives commission income (based on a percentage of the transaction value) from merchants for processing transactions with payments made via MPay.

In November 2022, MPay cooperated with Alipay+ (a suite of global cross-border digital payment and marketing solutions launched by Ant Group) and has officially become a payment partner of Taobao (Macao, China) to provide electronic payment services to its users. Residents in Macau and other registered users who are not Mainland Chinese residents can now use MPay to make payments in Macau patacas directly when shopping online with Taobao (Macao). MPay has also launched a new wallet function, namely “Group Red Packets” during December 2022 to allow a personalized feature for sending red packets for the Chinese New Year.

As one of the leading mobile payment e-wallets in Macau, MPay will continue to explore on strategic cooperation with Alibaba Group and Ant Group to further develop and create more diverse business scenarios within the e-commerce and digital media and entertainment landscape, in addition to exploring commercialization opportunities within the Macau electronic payment ecosystem. Registered users of MPay account for over 90% of local residents.

Acquiring services

The Group supplies integrated payment terminals and provides acquiring services to merchants which enable merchants to accept different payment methods of other payment service providers, including but not limited to the “Alipay” e-wallet, the “AlipayHK” e-wallet and Ant Bank’s “Alipay (Macao)” e-wallet operated by the Alipay entities and/or their affiliate(s), WeChat Pay and other e-wallets launched by certain other banks in Macau. The Group receives commission income (based on a percentage of the transaction value) from merchants for processing payment of the transactions and pays a portion of such commission (based on a percentage lower than the commission rate of the transaction value) as service fees to the other payment service providers.

Macau Pass has also provided acquiring services through Alipay+ partners’ e-wallets such as GCash, Touch ‘n Go eWallet and TrueMoney, which was officially approved in May 2023. This means, in addition to Alipay in Mainland China, AlipayHK, WeChat Pay and other e-wallets launched by other banks in Macau, Macau Pass payment devices can now also accept payments from the aforesaid three overseas leading e-wallets from the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand respectively, following South Korea’s Kakao Pay. Through the cooperation with Alipay+, the innovative one-stop payment solution will accelerate the digital transformation of local merchants in Macau, create a connected international digital payment ecosystem for Macau, solve the problem of cross-border payment for international tourists, and help small and medium-sized enterprises find new marketing growth opportunities.