From June 16 to 18, 2026, the China International Financial Exhibition hosted by China Financial Electronics Group Co., Ltd. was grandly held in Shanghai. The exhibition, with the theme of “Building the Foundation for Financial Power and Digital Innovation for the Future”, formed a synergistic resonance with the Lujiazui Forum.
The exhibition brings together the cutting-edge achievements of global payment technology, practical cases of deep integration of AI and payment, the new architecture of digital RMB cross-border settlement and the intelligent global account system as core highlights, attracting in-depth participation from representatives of financial institutions from London, Africa, Central Asia, Latin America and other places, jointly sketching a new picture of the evolution of the global payment ecosystem.
Ant International employee in London, Joshua Way, whose Chinese name is Wei Zhuoxi, was appointed by the company to make a special trip to Shanghai to observe the exhibition.
He said that before coming to China, he had never experienced a real-life scenario where artificial intelligence and daily payments were seamlessly connected. In China, all operations such as taking a taxi, ordering food, scanning QR codes to shop, and even paying bills can be completed with just one Alipay application.
In contrast, although London has strong momentum in the popularization of NFC payments and the expansion of digital banking, it has not yet formed such a highly integrated and scenario-connected super application ecosystem.
This experience of “connecting all industries with one end” made him intuitively realize that AI is evolving from a technical support role to an underlying architectural force in the payment system.
Lu Jing, President and Vice Chairman of Standard Chartered China, pointed out during the exhibition exchange that financial technology is not simply optimizing processes, but is fundamentally restructuring the value chain and operating paradigm of cross-border payments, injecting higher efficiency, stronger resilience and wider inclusiveness into capital flows, thereby promoting the in-depth development of the RMB internationalization process.
LISA, the payment business manager of an African bank, was attracted by the intensive emergence of AI payment implementation scenarios when she entered the exhibition area.
At the WeChat Pay booth, a smart business robot equipped with a multi-modal AI engine aroused her great interest. It can perform multiple functions at different times and significantly improve service temperature and repurchase willingness.
In the immersive digital payment experience area created by Wanglian, LISA experienced AI visual recognition weighing and zero-delay one-click settlement, wearing AI AR glasses to realize “pay as soon as you see it”, as well as “touch and touch” near-field communication payment and living palmprint biometric authentication payment. She felt as if she had stepped into the next decade of payment in advance.
Wei Zhuoxi is transforming what he sees and feels at Chinese exhibitions into Ant International’s global service capabilities.
He demonstrated on the spot a global account service system embedded with an AI decision-making engine, allowing Australian craftsmen to directly sell products to the global market and collect payments in real time, with all complex links automatically executed by AI.
Inspired by the exhibition, he has planned to launch a new round of technology integration so that small and micro operators can enjoy the same financial infrastructure support as multinational companies.
The cross-border expansion of digital renminbi has become another major focus.
Aminah, head of cross-border payments at a large bank in Central Asia, focused on the actual implementation progress of QR code interconnection technology.
During the exhibition, the Digital RMB International Operation Center signed direct participant service agreements with the first batch of 26 overseas financial institutions, marking the official extension of digital RMB cross-border payment capabilities to multiple regions.
The “CBETS” cross-border settlement comprehensive service platform has three major differentiated advantages. It not only covers a variety of consumption scenarios, but can also carry high-end businesses and support financial institutions to iterate system capabilities on demand.
Aminah said that this provides a solid foundation for the establishment of a local currency settlement channel between China and Central Asia. She has started consultations with Chinese banks at the exhibition site on the application of digital renminbi in bilateral energy trade.
According to the organizers, the cross-border application of digital renminbi will be the first to be implemented on a large scale in some scenarios. The relevant plans of Bank of Communications and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China have achieved remarkable results.
Aminah specifically pointed out that the rapid transformation of China’s payment ecosystem has benefited from a set of regulatory frameworks that are both prudent, deterministic and forward-looking.
Global payment innovation is not a one-way output, but a multi-faceted symbiosis.
Yu Xiang, vice president of commerce in the Asia-Pacific region of Brazilian cross-border payment platform EBANX, shared his platform’s successful experience in Brazil. This logic is being copied to other markets, helping global merchants reach the massive digital native consumers in emerging markets.
This exhibition is not only a concentrated display of technological achievements, but also an important hub for the collaborative evolution of the global payment ecosystem.
When AI becomes the “operating system” for payment, digital legal currency becomes the “settlement language” connecting different economies, and the regulatory framework becomes the “road builder”, payment is reshaping the trust base and value flow network of global commerce with unprecedented depth and breadth.
