Apple Pay Offers up Big Incentives for Users in China

It must be frustrating for Apple. It’s been trying to break into the Chinese mobile payments market for some time now, starting with finding local partners and then trying to actually eke out some market share in the face of Alipay and WeChat Pay, who between them have most of the market on lock. Never let it be said, though, that Apple wasn’t ready to pull out all the stops, and is therefore turning to direct cash incentives in the form of discounts to pull more users in.

Essentially, Apple Pay will now start offering discounts of up to 50 percent off purchases at participating vendors, just by using Apple Pay at checkout. Many of these are Western brands—McDonald’s was noted strongly in the mix—but others are showing up as well. Burger King and Costa Coffee are taking up to 50 percent off up to 15 yuan.

Plus, those who use Apple Pay are being rewarded enormously for using certain credit cards as part of the payment, with reward points reaching as much as 50 times standard value.

Lest every other Apple Pay user start complaining about where their massive incentives are, it’s worth noting that this is a limited-time event only. The promotional period in question starts July 18 and runs through July 24, so it’s basically just a test-the-waters sort of event to get more users to see how working with Apple Pay actually works.

With a market valued at just shy of $6 trillion, it’s easy to see why Apple wants any kind of fraction of that. For comparison’s sake, reports note Apple posted just over $200 billion in annual revenue for fiscal 2016, which demonstrates how important it is to have even the scantest fraction of this market in play. After factoring out the two elephants in the room, which between them control a reported 92 percent of the field, “a scant fraction” is about all that’s left.

Still, when you’re talking about a market measured in trillions to major corporations who make billions, getting in on that action is worth looking into. A few discounts now might be enough to seed the ground sufficient to get an entire percent of that market.