The “leader” of the cross-border payment giant welcomes the new year.
On June 22, the CEO of digital payment platform PayPal China was approved to change.
As the first foreign-funded payment platform licensed in China, PayPal is making steady progress in promoting service merchants to go overseas based on its brand influence in the Chinese market.
However, many “back waves” on the current cross-border payment track are reshaping the industry’s new competitiveness, leaving PayPal China’s new coach with a test question.
The People’s Bank of China Beijing Branch’s major matters change license information for non-bank payment institutions shows that it is agreed that Zhang Hong will be the general manager and chairman of PayPal Payment (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “PayPal Payment”), and Liu Zhiyong will be the deputy general manager of the company.
On the same day, PayPal’s official website announced the appointment of Zhang Hong as CEO of PayPal China, chairman and general manager of PayPal China’s licensed institution PayPal Payments. He will comprehensively coordinate PayPal’s overall strategic planning, business innovation expansion and daily operation management in China, and lead the team to promote PayPal’s long-term development in the Chinese market.
Before the announcement of this appointment, there were market reports that Qiu Han, the former CEO of PayPal China, had recently resigned.
Regarding this personnel change, PayPal responded that during his tenure, Qiu Han led the team to establish a good relationship and cooperation foundation with merchants and partners in a complex and ever-changing business environment.
The company greatly appreciates Qiu Han’s extensive work in building the company’s China operations and wishes her all the best in the future.
China is one of PayPal’s important international markets. PayPal’s long-term commitment to the Chinese market has not changed, and this adjustment will not affect the company’s strategic direction and daily operations.
According to reports, Zhang Hong will join PayPal in 2023 as PayPal’s global vice president, responsible for the implementation of a number of global key projects in China, including the recently launched WeChat payment interconnection project between PayPal World and TenPay Global.
What deserves more attention is Zhang Hong’s rich localization resume.
Before joining PayPal, Zhang Hong served as senior managing director and chief representative of the New York Representative Office of China Investment Corporation.
He has long coordinated corporate strategy, cross-border investment, corporate governance and overseas business expansion, and has accumulated mature cross-regional management and practical experience in the Chinese and North American markets.
At the same time, Zhang Hong’s legal background has given the market more expectations for his follow-up direction.
Wang Pengbo, chief analyst at Broadcom Consulting, pointed out that Zhang Hong’s appointment will help strengthen the connection between PayPal’s Chinese business and the global compliance system. It is foreseeable that in the future, PayPal’s strategic planning in China will pay more attention to regulatory adaptability and institutional stability, promote implementable and sustainable cooperation models in core scenarios such as cross-border payments and merchant services, and improve the standardization and long-term certainty of local operations.
In 2019, PayPal entered the Chinese payment market through the acquisition of Guofubao (later renamed PayPal Payment), becoming the first foreign-funded payment platform licensed in China.
Judging from its subsequent actions, PayPal will focus its development mainly on cross-border payments and overseas services for Chinese merchants.
For example, the global payment platform launched in 2024 will integrate a series of cross-border collection and payment products and solutions tailored for cross-border companies, helping Chinese companies of all sizes to easily receive and pay in a variety of cross-border trade scenarios.
In 2025, the platform will be upgraded to version 2.0, with a stronger “AI empowerment” color.
Qiu Han once explained in detail PayPal’s core competitiveness – full-chain service capabilities.
“On the one hand, it is difficult for small and medium-sized merchants or even large-scale enterprises to quickly establish brand trust when going overseas to unfamiliar markets. PayPal’s global brand power and credibility can endorse merchants and make overseas consumers willing to pay with confidence. This is the core advantage of the front-end; on the other hand, even in the fund settlement and repayment process where the market seems to be homogeneous, PayPal has also achieved industry leadership.
, overseas U.S. dollar exchange settlement and repayment to domestic bank accounts can be completed within 4 hours, and the rates remain low.”
In terms of corporate governance, PayPal will increase its capital twice in 2021 and 2023, with its registered capital jumping from 143 million yuan to 4.52 billion yuan; in 2025, PayPal was involved in a large-scale layoff controversy, and China was affected to a certain extent.
“PayPal’s more than six years of development in the Chinese market can be summarized as prudent focus, based on the licensed entity PayPal payment, concentrating resources to serve cross-border trade scenarios, focusing on supporting Chinese export merchants to receive overseas payments.” Wang Pengbo concluded.
Judging from performance, large-scale user coverage has been formed, but at the same time it has not reached a high revenue share.
Its cross-border collection business has maintained stable operation, and has served a number of Chinese merchants with continuous overseas income. It has built a verifiable closed loop of transaction scale and compliance in B2B and B2C scenarios, without major operational or regulatory risks, reflecting strong institutional adaptability and business sustainability.
In Wang Pengbo’s view, as both foreign-funded payment institutions, compared to local service providers such as PayPal that focus on fund collection, foreign exchange settlement and API embedding for foreign trade companies, PayPal relies more on its global account system and brand recognition to form a differentiated advantage in connecting overseas buyers and Chinese merchants.
PayPal can meet the needs of specific customer groups for international payment certainty by maintaining channel availability and ensuring the stability of cross-border settlements.
The recent promotion of interconnection with WeChat Pay also marks a substantial step forward from one-way export collection to two-way cross-border connection.
Wang Pengbo believes that overall, PayPal’s strategy in China is conservative, but it has maintained its core business fundamentals under the premise of compliance, and has set aside interfaces for future expansion of cooperation in new scenarios such as inbound consumption and digital trade. It can be seen as a long-term layout with clear goals.
However, there are also views that regard “conservatism” as a “double-edged sword.”
Gao Chengyuan, a well-known financial writer and president of the Changyuan Impact Research Institute, believes that PayPal’s cross-border business relies on brand recognition and global account systems to serve large enterprises and high customer unit price scenarios. In contrast, the “small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises + vertical scenarios + API embedding” route has fast volume, high stickiness, and more aggressive rates.
If too much energy is spent on licenses and compliance, product iteration will be significantly slower than competitors.
“PayPal’s original intention to serve Chinese companies going global remains unchanged. We will build on PayPal’s global network advantages, seize the opportunities of China’s booming digital economy, focus on the main cross-border payment business, continue to create payment products and services that are suitable for the local market and have core competitiveness, take into account innovation and compliance, provide Chinese merchants with safe, efficient and convenient cross-border payment solutions, and help Chinese companies achieve global and sustainable development.” Zhang Hong said.
PayPal did not respond to the specific subsequent business layout.
The domestic payment market stock competition is in full swing, and the cross-border track is now also “rolling up”.
How to get out of differentiation and how to grasp the balance between compliance and innovation have become common questions faced by foreign payment institutions in the Chinese market.
As industry insiders bluntly say, compliance will become the core development trend of China’s cross-border payment industry in the next 3-5 years.
On the one hand, regulators will continue to strengthen compliance requirements, and formal platforms operating with licenses will become the mainstream of the market; on the other hand, the industry will also pay more attention to the combination of “compliance” and “localization.”
The platform must not only be legally licensed, but also must have a deep understanding of consumer habits, compliance rules and legal requirements in overseas markets. Only in this way can it truly help Chinese merchants achieve “going global, getting their money back, and keeping their funds safe.”
“The current market situation is no longer suitable for institutions to blindly pursue scale expansion, but should turn to capacity building and ecological collaboration.” Wang Pengbo said.
In this regard, Wang Pengbo suggested that PayPal, firstly, improve its local operation capabilities, including establishing a product and service team that is closer to the needs of Chinese merchants, to achieve rapid response to market changes and customer needs; secondly, deepen cooperation with domestic licensed institutions, platforms and clearing networks, and improve compliance with regulations.
Within the framework, new scenarios such as B2B cross-border settlement and inbound payment will be expanded, and the role of “connector” will be strengthened; third, new technologies such as AI and big data will be actively applied to achieve application breakthroughs in anti-fraud, risk control modeling, intelligent customer service and cross-border capital flow prediction, and improve service efficiency and system resilience.
Only by organically combining compliance bottom lines, local adaptation and technical capabilities can we maintain long-term competitiveness in the increasingly sophisticated cross-border payment industry.
Gao Chengyuan pointed out that if PayPal wants to “maintain its position in the industry”, its core strategy should be “going deep and not wide.”
Abandon direct competition with local giants on the C-side and focus on high-profit, strong-barrier segments such as cross-border e-commerce B2B collection and payment.
It is worth noting that innovation must occur within a compliance framework, such as using its global network advantages to help Chinese sellers solve tax compliance, return disputes and other “post-payment services” in the European and American markets. This is a moat that is difficult for opponents to copy in the short term.
