You may have missed it. After all it looked like a consumer story. KLM is now accepting WeChat Pay as a means of payment. If you think that this is tantamount to a Visa retailer announcing that it is now accepting Mastercard, think again.
WeChat Pay is, along with Alibaba's Alipay, one of China's two big consumer payment platforms. And the significance lies in their methodology and positioning.
Both are integral parts of larger social and shopping platforms used in consumers' leisure lives. And that just might be the vital point.
Many power showers were installed in European homes a generation ago because people began to want the same experience in their homes that they enjoyed during their business trips. People tried new food on their business trips and then wanted to sample it at home too.
But somehow along the way the lines crossed and innovation started happening in the consumer world, not the business world. People wanted the convenience they found in their leisure lives in their working lives. For example, online booking gained traction among business travellers because people wanted the same user-friendly, seamless experience in booking their business travel that they had when selecting and organising their leisure travel.
The same phenomenon is affecting payments.
Payment is an important element of the new push for seamless travel. It is less and less being thought of as a distinct process of its own — picture a phalanx of typists generating invoices or credit control chasing payment — and we increasingly look at reconciliation and settlement as part of the booking and fulfilment process.
What payment processes are chosen are critical because they are increasingly integrated in the main process rather than being sourced as an independent partner.
This is what's happening in China where the consumer mobile-social experience is much more integrated and seamless than it is here in Europe. Shopping, chatting and paying are all done through mobile (See here for more on China).
There is no doubt that payments will become more seamless in business travel. Although much corporate IATA air travel is still purchased and settled through a clearance house system — BSP — via TMCs, there is a lot of air and other transport and accommodation which is paid for via card. The only reason that we probably retain physical pieces of plastic rather than an integrated process is habit. After all, "if it ain't broke, why fix it?"
The traditional process may not be broke but it could be so much better.
As the focus is more and more firmly on the traveller experience and on efficient data collection and analysis and the minimisation of error and unnecessary manual effort, reconciliation and payment will not be independent but part of an integrated process, whether that be virtual cards or mobile.
The Chinese are leading the way.