INTERNET giant Tencent is betting on China’s smart transportation market, expanding its presence in fields ranging from subway QR code payment to bus hailing.

“Transportation is a very important area for Tencent’s exploration in the industrial Internet,” said Zheng Haojian, Tencent vice president in charge of smart transportation, mobile payment and Internet finance innovation.

“We hope we can utilize our technological achievements over the past two decades to become a digital assistant to the public transportation industry,” he said.

Tencent’s QR code payment services for buses, subways, cableways and ferries have so far covered more than 50 million users in 100 cities since 2017. Travelers can scan, pay and pass with their smartphones instead of swiping public transportation cards or queuing for tickets.

The company has also signed an agreement with Shenzhen Airlines to allow passengers to use QR codes for security checks and boarding planes.

It is also piloting a bus hailing business in central China’s Zhengzhou and exploring the application of cloud computing and big data in analyzing real-time traffic data for smarter transportation management.

Smart technology will boost the development of China’s public transportation, which only accounts for 20-40 percent of all travels in the country, compared with 50-70 percent in some developed countries, Zheng said.

“There is huge room for development,” he said. “If we can increase the ratio by 10 or 20 percentage points, there will be big improvement to traffic congestion.” (Xinhua)