Overseas payment is being fully upgraded to global payment.
In the past, Pay’s efforts overseas were to help Chinese companies get their money back on the B-side, and to help Chinese tourists pay locally and conveniently on the C-side.
However, in recent years, Chinese payment companies have begun to change their thinking. The corporate strategy has shifted from “going overseas” to “globalization”, and has upgraded from simply serving Chinese companies and tourists to comprehensive services for Chinese and foreign users.
This upgrade process is not easy. Most companies have encountered difficulties in overseas payment experience before.
Recently, TenPay, a cross-border payment platform under Tencent Financial Technology
Global’s “Mini Program Global Cashier” and Singapore’s Anywheel’s attempts are providing Chinese payment overseas companies with a reference answer for upgrading to global payments.
Singapore’s attempt to build a local bike-sharing platform: There will be 3.1 million tourists from mainland China to Singapore in 2025, making it Singapore’s largest source of tourists.
In just one month during the Spring Festival in 2026, 430,000 Chinese tourists visited Singapore.
In addition, Singapore has a relatively high proportion of local Chinese. Singapore has a local population of about 6 million, of which Chinese account for more than 70%.
A series of factors such as cultural proximity, ability to leverage Southeast Asia, perfect financial system, and transparent policies have made Singapore the first stop for many Chinese payment companies going overseas. The Singapore MPI license has also become a necessary license for payment overseas.
As for WeChat, Singapore’s local WeChat mini programs are highly accepted.
Official data shows that in 2025, the number of monthly active users of WeChat mini programs in Singapore has exceeded 1 million.
This has become the best overseas testing ground for global cashiers to verify their business logic.
On February 19, one year after launching the WeChat mini program, Singapore’s largest local bike-sharing platform Anywheel launched the mini program global checkout. Local Singaporean users using the Anywheel WeChat mini program can no longer just scan the QR code to find available bicycles nearby, but can also use local payment methods to complete payments within the mini program.
In the first month after the global cashier launched Anywheel, the report card was released: the conversion rate of Anywheel users from clicking on the WeChat applet to final payment, and the transaction volume of the WeChat applet increased by nearly half.
Anywheel is the first shared bicycle operator in Southeast Asia to launch a WeChat mini program service. It has an operating license to operate 35,000 bicycles and has more than 2 million users in Singapore, accounting for approximately 40% of the total population of Singapore.
Behind this outstanding performance, what can we learn from the cooperation between Global Cashier and Anywheel?
Access to local payment methods: When WeChat users registered with overseas users using non-+86 mobile phone numbers browse on the WeChat mini program and have purchase or use needs, they were previously unable to use local payment methods to complete the payment, and user needs could not be met.
“I have been a WeChat user since 2012 and have lived in China for a long time. I am very familiar with the convenience of WeChat mini programs.” Htay Aung, CEO of Anywheel in Singapore
“But before the global cashier was launched, if I registered with a foreign number and ID card, even if I was the founder, I would not be able to pay within the Anywheel WeChat applet.” Now, the global cashier has access to local payment methods, and overseas users can also use their familiar payment accounts to complete payments on the WeChat applet.
The emergence of WeChat mini programs and global cashiers has helped Anywheel solve three major problems, allowing the WeChat ecosystem and Anywheel to achieve two-way business development.
The first is to solve the entrance problem.
“It would be an exaggeration to say that Chinese tourists no longer know how to download new software.” Htay Aung concluded in his long-term observation. “When they see a QR code, they default to scanning with WeChat. Without mini programs, Chinese tourists often don’t want to use them, and they don’t want to download new apps.” Due to the successful popularity of WeChat mini programs in China, Chinese people have a greater resistance to downloading apps when traveling abroad.
In the year since Anywheel launched the WeChat mini program, it has solved the entrance problem for new users and seamlessly adapted to the usage habits of Chinese tourists.
Secondly, the business closed loop is completed through payment.
In the era of cash, payment is the end of business, but in the era of mobile payment, payment often represents the starting point of business.
In order to expand more users and increase repurchase, Anywheel has recently launched a preferential policy. After WeChat mini program users recharge 50 yuan, they can get 10% or 5 yuan cash back.
Recharge once and use it multiple times, which greatly increases user stickiness.
In addition, the launch of the global cashier has promoted the use of WeChat mini programs by local users, realizing a closed business loop from customer acquisition to payment to repurchase.
The last step is to broaden the depth of the company’s strategic layout.
Anywheel has operations in Thailand and Vietnam, which are also popular tourist areas that Chinese tourists are willing to visit.
“Thailand has 6 to 7 million Chinese tourists every year, which means that WeChat mini programs are a must-have for our business.” Htay Aung said.
The global cashier allows Chinese tourists and local users to make payments, and can help companies achieve broader corporate strategic extensions.
In addition, due to the integration of popular local payment methods, Global Cashier can help connected companies solve local payment adaptation problems and cater to local users’ payment habits.
For example, the Global Cashier in Singapore is connected to the popular local payment application PayNow. When selecting PayNow to pay in the WeChat applet, a QR code will be generated. After the user takes a screenshot, switch to PayNow and scan the code to complete the payment.
This payment process is generally not accepted in the Chinese market.
However, Chen Luxi, head of global cashier business development, explained that saving a screenshot and then opening the App is a unified local operation in Singapore, and local WeChat users are already very familiar with this routine.
If adjustments are made, it may not meet the needs of local users.
In addition, small merchants and users in Singapore like to pay with PayNow very much. The proportion of PayNow payment is higher among the overall payment methods, higher than the proportion of card payment.
The overall process can meet the usage habits of local users.
According to Mobile Payment Network, in addition to receiving good market feedback in Singapore, the global cashier has also been launched in Macau, China. After the local life service platform Aomi in the region has access to the global cashier, its payment conversion rate is 6.5 times higher than the previous H5 page payment.
In the future, the global cashier will also expand to Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and other places, and support multiple expansion models such as direct customers and service providers.
Becoming an element of global payment: “What is the difference between this and WeChat payment?” Chen Luxi described the questions that users and merchants asked most during the market expansion process, especially the Chinese who are familiar with the WeChat payment experience in China.
Users will always see new things in the formats they are most familiar with in the past.
This is also a common problem faced by Chinese payment companies going overseas, and is often compared to global payment companies such as PayPal, Adyen, and Stripe.
In the context of China’s mobile payment overseas, it needs to integrate payment formats that are prevalent around the world in order to upgrade the “Chinese” label to “global”.
Global cashiers currently have three major features, which are also what current overseas payment companies can refer to when going global: a complete payment experience.
That is, it integrates electronic wallets, local real-time payment networks, and multiple types of payment methods such as credit cards and debit cards to meet the diverse payment needs of overseas merchants.
Unified payment access.
That is, the unified API interface integrates local payment methods from various places and provides merchants with a one-stop access solution.
Solve the problem of scattered payment methods and complex access in different countries and regions.
Payment security.
That is to say, while supporting access to multiple payment methods, it can also cope with security and compliance challenges in the context of payment fragmentation.
One point of connection, available in many places overseas.
This is the product positioning of global cashiers. As Chinese payment companies are currently upgrading to international payment companies, it should also become a common product concept in the industry.
