Photo of Li Bing, Juneyao Air Co Ltd and Namita Lal, Standard Chartered.

Juneyao Air’s treasury team decided to cooperate with its banking partner to implement a mobile wallet collection solution. The bank’s solution leverages WeChat – a leading mobile payment aggregator in China (for credit, debit, stored value) – delivering a ‘one-stop shop’ eCommerce solution.

Embracing China’s mobile payment evolution

The challenge

Since its establishment in 2006, Juneyao Air has always been a pioneer in exploring and adopting innovative technologies available in the market to optimise its internal process as well as to enhance its end customer’s experience.

In more recent years its focus has been transactions, such as sales settlement, refund and charge-backs. In light of the changing technological environment in China, Juneyao Air sought a digitised solution that would alleviate many of the inefficacies the company had around these areas and enhance the experience of its customers when they book with the airline.

The solution

After researching what was possible, Juneyao Air’s treasury team decided to cooperate with Standard Chartered to implement a mobile wallet collection (MWC) solution. The bank’s solution leverages WeChat – a leading mobile payment aggregator in China (for credit, debit, stored value) – allowing Juneyao Air a one-stop shop eCommerce solution.

The solution eliminates cash by digital payments and receiving payments from multiple channels through a single gateway. In addition, the real-time generated QR codes provide sophisticated details about the transaction processes and simplifies the reconciliation process. Finally, the full integration and configuration system set up by the banks provides Juneyao Air with customised reporting through standard intraday statements.

Thanks to the MWC solution, customers only have to bind the bank card with WeChat wallet, log into the Juneyao Air website and then scan the WeChat QR code to complete the whole payment process. This solution replaces the original traditional cumbersome process of downloading different bank apps, which improves not only the speed of payment but also the success rate as well as sales volume. It also helps evade the risk of credit card refusal and improves the customer experience of booking and payment on the airline website.

In brief, the MWC enables Juneyao Air to:

• Enhance its end customer’s experience by providing a faster and easier way for online check-out.
• Shorten the overall collection cycle.
• See online collection details in a standardised bank statement allowing for simplified account reconciliation.

The full system integration and configuration provided by the bank gives Juneyao Air bank-grade security standards on the communication link with WeChat, with significantly lower costs compared to a direct connection between the company and WeChat.

Best practice and innovation

Juneyao Air aims to expand globally in the coming years as the growth in China’s outbound tourism market outpaces domestic tourism. And increasingly Chinese customers are looking to purchase plane tickets online, through mobile applications and through WeChat accounts.

Juneyao Air seized the opportunity of revolutionary breakthroughs in mobile payment technology and cooperated with renowned international enterprises; the high-end customers resources will be integrated with Juneyao Air’s international and domestic business routes. The MWC solution allows Juneyao Air to consolidate and view all these disparate payment types through a single window providing enhanced visibility over its incoming transactions. To put a figure on this, Juneyao Air says it is collecting approximately CNY1m to 2m per day through these channels.

The solution leverages the fast-growing and innovative mobile payment technology in China, greatly enhancing the end-customer experience. At the same time, Juneyao Air can speed up the whole collection and reconciliation process by receiving a consolidated and standardised bank statement.

In addition to this, the tailor-made port configuration and integration and configuration system set-up allows Juneyao Air to seamlessly conduct sales settlements, refunds and charge-backs, leading to significantly efficient operations as well as time savings.

The innovative cooperation with Standard Chartered to implement this mobile payment solution will help attract more potential high value customers on intercontinental routes, which will contribute to its internationalisation strategy. Through unremitting efforts and exploration, constant pursuit of innovation and high quality service, Juneyao Air will grow into the best model of a high value carrier.