New partnerships to allow UnionPay Credit Card acceptance with United Airlines

In order to meet the needs of Chinese travelers, United Airlines, UnionPay International and Planet Payment, Inc. announced the launch of UnionPay Credit Card acceptance with United Airlines for reservations and other ticketing purchases online and through call centers.

UnionPay International provides high quality, cost effective and secure cross-border payment services to world’s largest cardholder base and ensures convenient local services to a growing number of global businesses. It is a subsidiary of UnionPay, a Chinese financial services corporation which provides bank card services and a major card scheme in mainland China. Planet Payment is a leading provider of international payment processing and multi-currency processing services.

According to the World Tourism Barometer published by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, China led international outbound tourism in 2015 with the largest population of overseas tourists — 120 million Chinese citizens traveled overseas in 2015, spending $194 billion across the world.

“As a global airline with customers across the world, United places tremendous value in providing customers with easy, flexible, and secure options for payment when choosing to fly with us. UnionPay credit card acceptance, with the help of Planet Payment, gives our valued customers the ability to use UnionPay card products directly with United,” said Praveen Sharma, VP Loyalty at United.

Shuan Ghaidan, Director of Products of UnionPay International said, “We are very glad to cooperate with United Airlines and Planet Payment and believe this cooperation will offer greater convenience to our customers. We are devoted to providing safe and convenient cross-border payment services for our global cardholders.”

“We are excited to announce the launch of our UnionPay solution with United Airlines,” said Paul Levine, Senior Vice President, Planet Payment. “Our goal is to broaden payment acceptance for UnionPay cardholders around the globe.”

The first phase of this launch supports the acceptance of UnionPay Credit cards with acceptance of UnionPay Debit cards expected to follow at a later date.