Apple Pay will support Chinese consumers to bind Visa card payments.
On January 15, the international bank card organization Visa announced that it would cooperate with Apple to support Chinese cardholders to bind their Visa cards to Apple Pay and make payments in various scenarios such as overseas offline merchants, mobile apps or online websites.
The first batch to support binding to Apple
There are eight Visa issuing banks for Pay overseas payment, namely the four state-owned banks, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, and Bank of Communications, and the four joint-stock banks of China Merchants Bank, CITIC Bank, Ping An Bank, and Industrial Bank.
At the same time, Visa said that it is cooperating with more banks including Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Construction Bank, China Minsheng Bank, and China Everbright Bank, and relevant functions will be launched one after another in the future.
“We are pleased to join hands with Apple and financial institutions to take the lead in bringing a new safer and more convenient mobile payment experience to Chinese cardholders.” said Yin Xiaolong, President of Visa China.
Apple Pay is a mobile payment tool built into Apple devices such as iPhone and Apple Watch.
When using Apple Pay to pay offline, consumers only need to double-click the side button, and after completing the verification, bring the Apple device close to the acceptance device that supports “Tap and Pay” to make contact-free payment.
“Pay now” is an offline payment method that is frequently used overseas.
According to Visa’s overseas market statistics, currently, 79% of global offline transactions come from “pay once”.
Wang Pengbo, a senior analyst in the financial industry of Broadcom Consulting, said that the above-mentioned cooperation is essentially a cooperation between foreign cards and mobile payment tools. The core is to solve the mobile payment needs of existing card users, especially suitable for cross-border consumption and high-frequency outbound people.
“This is a concrete manifestation of payment interconnection under regulatory guidance. It is not only in line with the trend of opening up the bank card clearing market, but also allows Visa to maintain user access in the domestic market through cooperation with UnionPay without obtaining a domestic clearing license, while improving the convenience and security of payment for cardholders.” Wang Pengbo said.
At the same time, according to Yin Xiaolong, Visa has increased investment in the fields of data security and payment security, launched payment tokenization services in the Chinese market and taken the lead in realizing its application in cross-border scenarios.
The so-called payment tokenization service means that when a cardholder binds a bank card to a mobile phone or other device, neither the mobile device nor the cloud server saves key information such as bank card number and card verification code. The system will generate a unique device account and encrypt it. The encrypted account will be stored in the mobile phone for verification of payment information.
“In this way, the key card information of the cardholder is difficult to be obtained by the outside world, preventing theft and other problems caused by the leakage of key information such as card numbers.” said a person in the payment industry.
In April 2025, Mastercard and NetLink, a joint venture clearing agency of the company, also announced the official launch of payment tokenization services in China, aiming to strengthen the protection of consumer information security and improve payment convenience.
In addition, Visa-related business people said that Apple Pay not only supports small-amount high-frequency scenarios, but also supports large-amount consumption scenarios, depending on bank requirements.
It is worth noting that interviewees believe that this cooperation between Visa and Apple is more suitable for cross-border payment scenarios and will have limited impact on the domestic mobile payment pattern.
“Apple Pay itself has a very low market share in the domestic market. This cooperation only covers specific groups of people with Visa cards and Apple devices. The user base is limited and concentrated in niche scenarios. It will not divert users or transaction scale of mainstream payment tools, but only adds a niche payment option to the existing ecosystem.” Wang Pengbo believes that this cooperation will not have substantial changes in the domestic mobile payment pattern.
