New Zealand has highly banked population.

Wages, salaries and other payment

transaction are mostly depending on banking system. In order to increase
market share and effectively contend with their competitors, Westpac should
adapt the strategy that is most suitable for their key strengths, portfolio product,
target customers and geographic markets. There is three strategic options that
would help Westpac achieve this goal: using social networking as promotional
tool, providing mobile payment and China UnionPay cards. In our viewpoint,
providing China UnionPay cards is the strategy that has proven superior.

One of the main aspects that we firstly concern in selecting an appropriate

strategy is security or safety. If Westpac used social networks like Facebook as
their promotional tool, they would let their customers have to face with many
security issues like viruses, personal details leaking or spamming. Despite
Facebook has recently issued new privacy policy, security is still their major
problem because the main purpose of any social networks is connecting people,
it is a difficult challenge for Facebook to make people connect with each other as
much as possible while preventing them from internet threats. In another word,
China UnionPay cards, which like any EFTPOS cards, are more secure. There are
highly secure networks that are provided by the banks.

Another important issue that needed to concern is technology trend. Mobile

payment or contactless NFC (near field communication) in particular is the
technology that has just been introduced recently. Google and Apple have lately
introduced their new smartphone platforms with attached NFC payment
hardware and software. Which means it needs to take time before becoming
more popular and widely use. If Westpac adapted this strategy, they would also
need to replace and upgrade their infrastructure and training employees in order
to cope with the new technology that could take a lot of efforts and financial
resources from them. While China UnionPay cards, which also is ATM cards, is a
popular technology and widely use in New Zealand. As a result, Westpac just
need to make a small upgrade on their ATM network system so it can work with
China UnionPay cards.

A third aspect to concern is people who live and visit New Zealand described
their ethnicity as Chinese account for a noticeable number. According to The
Statistics New Zealand (2010) Chinese is the fifth largest ethnic group in New
Zealand and there are also about 5,500 visitor arrivals from China monthly.
Based on these figures, we can see that there are a number of China UnionPay
card owners which provide potential market segment for Westpac. In addition,
there has been exceeded 2.3 billion UnionPay cards issued worldwide and China
UnionPay has also established partnership with around 400 financial institutions
all over the world (www.chinaunionpay.com). Which means there would be
million potential customers around the world if Westpac offered UnionPay cards.

Definitely, both mobile payment and China UnionPay cards are the great
strategic options. However, mobile payment is more suitable for the future when
Westpac could make a necessary preparation. While China UnionPay is the
option that most suitable with Westpac’s key strengths, target customers,
portfolio product and geographic markets.
 References

The Statistics New Zealand (2010), International Travel and Migration: June
2010. Retrieved on January 16, 2011 from
http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/Migration/IntTravelAnd
Migration_HOTPJune2010/Commentary.aspx