As the 2025 annual reporting season gradually comes to an end, the annual reports of major payment institutions have been disclosed.
At present, my country’s payment industry has entered a stage of stable development from a period of rapid expansion. The growth rate of the overall transaction scale of the industry has slowed down and competition for existing stocks has intensified.
At the same time, the continuous improvement of the regulatory framework and the continuous breakthroughs in technological innovation are jointly reshaping the evolution path of the industry, promoting the industry’s cyclical adjustment from scale expansion to quality upgrading, and the operational differentiation of different institutions has also been further highlighted.
In this context, competition in the domestic market is becoming increasingly fierce. Cross-border payments have become an important starting point for many payment institutions to break through growth bottlenecks. More and more companies are shifting their strategic layout overseas to seek new growth space.
Wang Pengbo, chief analyst at Broadcom Consulting, said that listed payment companies that have disclosed performance show obvious structural differentiation. Traditional acquiring businesses are generally under pressure, while institutions with cross-border capabilities or value-added service support have achieved both revenue and profit growth.
The logic of industry growth has shifted from relying on transaction scale to relying on business structure optimization and compliance capability building.
In 2025, the domestic third-party payment industry will enter a stage of deep development that is standardized and mature. The growth rate of transaction scale will continue to slow down, and the differentiation of institutional performance will further intensify. Profit quality will replace scale expansion and become the key indicator to measure the core competitiveness of enterprises.
The performance of Yeka Group is representative to a certain extent.
The company achieved revenue of 3.311 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 7.25%; the profit attributable to equity holders was 92.244 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.88%, and the profit side achieved double-digit growth.
However, the total payment transaction volume (GPV) of its domestic payment business was RMB 2.34 trillion, a slight increase of only 0.1% year-on-year.
In order to cope with the dilemma of stagnant scale, Yeka increased its domestic payment rate from 11.5 basis points in 2024 to 12.3 basis points in 2025, driving its one-stop payment service revenue to increase by 8.0% year-on-year to RMB 2.902 billion.
Lianlian Digital achieved both revenue and net profit growth during the industry adjustment period.
As of December 31, 2025, the company’s total annual revenue was 1.734 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.9%, setting another record high; gross profit increased by 28% year-on-year to 873 million yuan; adjusted operating profit reached 82.26 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 105.9%.
During the reporting period, the company focused its resources on serving the high-value needs of Chinese-funded enterprises in the globalization process, which led to a more solid foundation for the development of domestic payment business.
In 2025, the gross profit margin of domestic payment business will increase to 23%, a year-on-year increase of 3.3 percentage points.
Lakala will achieve a slight decrease in revenue in 2025, but a significant increase in profits.
Data show that during the reporting period, the company achieved operating income of 5.547 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.68%; the company’s net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was 1.171 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 233.33%; after deducting non-recurring gains and losses, its net profit attributable to the parent company was 301 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 45.58%.
It is worth noting that the surge in profits was mainly affected by non-operating factors: first, the change in the fair value of the listed company stock assets held by the company increased; second, the sale of part of the listed company stocks held by the company achieved a substantial increase in investment income.
Helibao’s parent company Rendong Holdings achieved a performance counterattack after restructuring.
In 2025, Rendong Holdings’ net assets turned from negative to positive, and its performance turned losses into profits. It achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company of 359.6 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 143.17%; after deducting non-recurring gains and losses, the net profit attributable to the parent company was 42.6545 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 129.14%.
The core force supporting its performance counterattack comes from the payment business. Its subsidiary HeliPay, as the core payment business operating entity, contributed 95.32% of Rendong Holdings’ revenue, approximately 784 million yuan.
Except for the above-mentioned head institutions, the performance of other payment-related institutions has shown obvious differentiation.
The consolidated turnover of Gaoyang Technology (its licensed payment institution Suixingpay) in 2025 is HK$2.1185 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 9%; the total annual loss is HK$146 million. The core reason for the shift from profit to loss is the decline in turnover in the payment and digital service categories.
As the main source of revenue of Gaoyang Technology, the annual turnover of this segment was HK$1.642 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 6%, and the operating loss reached HK$187.5 million. Suixingfu’s performance was under pressure, which directly dragged down the group’s overall performance.
Cuiwei Co., Ltd. (the parent company of Haike Rongtong) will achieve operating income of 2.32 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 4.08%. The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company is -481 million yuan, and the year-on-year loss narrows by 30.01%.
As the core payment entity of Cuiwei Co., Ltd., the cumulative transaction volume of traditional acquiring business in 2025 will reach 977.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%; the digital payment business has achieved rapid growth, with the transaction volume increasing by 141% year-on-year.
In 2025, Jialian Payment, a subsidiary of Xinguodu, will process a total of approximately 1.47 trillion yuan in transaction volume throughout the year, which is basically the same as last year. The monthly transaction flow trend has gradually stabilized. However, due to the adjustment of new merchant expansion strategies and increased marketing support, the company’s acquisition and value-added service business achieved operating income of approximately 1.964 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.03%.
“From our observations, we can see that the domestic acquiring market has entered the stage of stock competition, and the growth of transaction scale has stagnated or even declined. The main reasons are the lack of activity of offline small and micro merchants, the continued compression of arbitrage space by supervision, and the increasing squeezing effect of leading platforms on independent acquirers.” Wang Pengbo believes that the fundamental reasons lie in the following aspects: First, the turnover of small and micro merchants has declined;
Directly affects the scale of acquiring transactions; secondly, supervision has normalized the rectification of illegal business activities, and the past model of obtaining excess returns through price differences such as code hopping and cashing out has ended; thirdly, leading platforms have deeply penetrated merchants through ecological binding, such as through aggregated payments, mini programs, etc. Independent acquirers lack their own traffic and user stickiness, and it is difficult to maintain their original market share in the context of transparent rates.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the acquiring business has moved from incremental expansion to the stock optimization stage where efficiency is prioritized.
In the context of sluggish growth in the domestic payment market and increasingly fierce stock competition, cross-border payment has become the core direction for payment institutions to break through growth bottlenecks with the dual support of policy dividends and market demand.
Cai Yingnan, general manager of Yibao Pay Smart Consumption Marketing Center, said that looking around the world, Chinese companies are ushering in a period of quality improvement when going global, and cross-border payments have been upgraded from channel services to global capital service networks.
Lianlian Digital has designated 2025 as a critical year for comprehensively deepening its globalization strategy and accelerating its transformation into a new generation of multinational companies.
In 2025, Lianlian Digital’s total payment volume TPV reached 452.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.7%; revenue was 1.045 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.3%, and the growth rate far exceeded the industry average.
By the end of 2025, Lianlian Digital’s global payment licenses and related qualifications have expanded to 66, its service scope covers more than 100 countries and regions, and it supports transaction settlement in more than 130 currencies.
Lakala’s cross-border payment business also performed well. In 2025, the transaction amount reached 88.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 80.69%, and it served more than 210,000 customers, a year-on-year increase of 73.99%.
In the first quarter of 2026, its cross-border payment business continued to maintain rapid growth, with the transaction amount increasing by 39% year-on-year, and the number of service merchants increasing by 62% year-on-year.
Relying on localized operation strategies, Yeka has achieved leapfrog growth in its overseas payment business.
In 2025, the GPV of its overseas payment business will be approximately RMB 5 billion, a significant year-on-year increase of 323.3%.
From the perspective of profitability, Yeka’s overseas payment rate reaches 60 basis points, and its gross profit margin is about 50%, which is much higher than the domestic business. Although the current GPV contribution of overseas business to the overall payment business is only about 0.2%, the profit contribution has reached about 3%, becoming an important engine for the group’s profit growth.
Helibao has continued to make efforts in the field of cross-border payments in recent years, and has achieved rapid growth in the number of customers served and the scale of transactions.
The cross-border payment transaction volume in 2025 will be approximately 82.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of approximately 159%.
Jialian Payment, a subsidiary of Xinguodu, is accelerating its breakthroughs in the field of cross-border payments. In 2025, the amount of cross-border payment transactions will exceed RMB 2.4 billion, with an average quarter-on-quarter growth rate of over 100%.
Yipay, a subsidiary of Commodity City, relies on the unique ecological advantages of Yiwu’s small commodity trade. As of the end of 2025, the cumulative cross-border collection volume has reached US$11.2 billion, and it has opened cross-border collection accounts for more than 25,000 merchants. Its business covers 176 countries and regions, and supports 29 mainstream currency swaps.
“Overall, cross-border payments have become the core direction for payment institutions to break through the domestic ceiling, but the competitive landscape is highly uneven. First movers build barriers with licenses, clearing networks and local compliance capabilities, while latecomers face high thresholds and long-term investment pressure.” Wang Pengbo predicted that judging from the development of the past year or so, cross-border payments will shift from racing to deepen compliance, focusing on testing the efficiency of foreign exchange settlement, anti-money laundering systems, data localization and local merchant service capabilities.
He believes that for most institutions, the key to balancing domestic and overseas operations is to use the stable cash flow generated by domestic business to support the construction of cross-border compliance systems, rather than simply transferring resources or manufacturing concepts; at the same time, they must stop relying on non-core means such as asset sales and loan assistance to whitewash their statements, and truly focus on building underlying capabilities.
Otherwise, the so-called “second growth curve” will be difficult to implement, and the industry will further concentrate on leading platforms with full-chain cross-border service capabilities.
