Cash will soon not be king when it comes to China’s Hangzhou International Airport which is in the process of becoming a cashless Airport – the first of its kind in the world. While some of the services at connecting hubs including airports have been available in cashless options for years, a fully paperless system is a novel move, which in all probability would be a relief for those setting foot on China’s busiest airport.
As reported by Global times, via Chinese-language publication ThePaper.cn, the Hangzhou International Airport is in talks with leading providers such as AllPay to enable travelers to make cashless payments for all airport services. This extremely lucrative system will allow users to pay for food, beverage, and sundries using simple mobile payment gateways. The airport is also planning on developing a larger infrastructure to allow passengers to book hotels, tickets, transportation, parking and shopping all from one online system.
On similar lines, the Hangzhou airport (which also happens to be one of the major connecting hubs in the region) will also upgrade its artificial intelligence interfaces at security checkpoints along with new image recognition features to increase overall operational efficiency by reducing waiting time. As analyzed recently, online payments and paperless transactions already hold a high level of penetration in Hangzhou, given the base of online payment giant Alibaba Group Holding in the region. Time for airports across the globe to take some queues from the Hangzhou International Airport and go cashless!
(Image used for representation only)
[Via – GlobalTimes]
