The payment solution will be available across the arenas ticketing, concessions, and team store, streamlining the payments experience for the Chinese sports fan visiting the greater Washington, D.C. metro area.
Together with its global partners, Alipay serves 1 billion users worldwide. In the US, the platform connects Chinese consumers with local American merchants, including retail, cultural, and tourist attractions. A report from Nielsen highlights that in 2018, over 60% percent of Chinese tourists made payments with their mobile phones and, on their most recent overseas trips, used mobile for a third of their transactions, overtaking cash for the first time.
In 2016, around 3 million Chinese visitors traveled to the US, and overall spending by Chinese tourists to the DC metro area was approximately 600 million, according to the US Department of Commerce. Research from the Washington Board of Tourism shows that Chinese travelers were the top overseas visitors to the metro area in 2017, with a total of 302,000 visitors.
The arena boasts an average of 220 events per year and has hosted more than 47 million people since it opened in 1997.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now