Consumers will soon have more payments option for their MTR rides beyond just Octopus cards. Fresh out of their earlier announcement to enable Alipay by 2020, MTR awarded contracts to 3 more players, namely TNG Wallet, Union Pay and WeChat Pay.

The QR code based payment is expected to be made available 2021, 1 year after Alipay’s exclusive rights expires. This puts Alipay at a significant advantage over it’s bitter rival WeChat Pay with an additional 1 year time frame to launch aggressive user acquisition campaigns.

The introduction of new options will likely a take a bite out of Octopus Card’s very dominant position in Hong Kong with 99% of its citizens using the card.

Hong Kong has often been referred to as a victim of its own success when it comes to their mobile wallet push, the popularity of Octopus was cited by some as a reason why Hong Kong was slow to explore other payment options.

The end of its monopoly could potentially the be tipping to point to realise Hong Kong’s cashless ambitions.