Caesars Entertainment Corporation recently launched WeChat Pay, a Chinese digital wallet similar to Apple Pay. Users can access the app to purchase show tickets, food or souvenirs at 16 point-of-sale locations inside Caesars Palace, the Linq Promenade and Paris Las Vegas. Purchases made in Las Vegas will settle in U.S. dollars and be subject to a transaction fee.
Caesars Entertainment is the first Strip operator to use the service.
Caesars Entertainment Corporate Vice p\President of International Marketing Bruce Bommarito said, “We want to do this for our Chinese customers to make them feel at home. We have been working hard on the Chinese market for some time.” Bommarito added Caesars plans to expand WeChat to dozens more POS locations in its Las Vegas properties by the end of the year.
WeChat Pay is part of the Chinese social media giant WeChat, which also offers a popular messaging service similar to Facebook’s Whatsapp and e-commerce. It launched across the U.S. earlier this year. WeChat has 938 million monthly active user accounts globally and WeChat Pay has 600 million.
Caesars began allowing Chinese nationals the option of booking rooms at its U.S. properties directly through WeChat last year. Union Gaming analyst John Decree said, “All this stuff helps, particularly with brand awareness with the Chinese community. That said, I don’t think it materially moves the needle in terms of incremental revenue, at least not right away.”
Nearly 207,000 Chinese tourists visited Las Vegas in 2015, an increase of 9.6 percent compared with the same period in 2014. As a result, Hainan Airlines offered the first direct flights from Beijing to Las Vegas in December.
