On June 11, 2026, under the joint witness of the governors of the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of Indonesia, UnionPay and its partners officially announced that the China-Indonesia cross-border QR code interconnection project was officially launched.
From this moment on, users in China can open QRIS (Quick Response Code Indonesian) APP, connect to the bank APP of Yunwang platform, or Alipay in tens of millions of Indonesian stores.
Standard (Indonesia’s national standard QR code payment system) merchants scan the QR code to pay; and Indonesian people coming to China can also use dozens of local mainstream e-wallets to “scan and pay” at UnionPay and Alipay QR code merchants in China.
This is not only a historic handshake between the payment infrastructure of the two largest economies in Asia, but also marks that the global payment system has entered a new stage on the track of interconnection, becoming a vivid footnote of “leading the new wave of financial globalization with payment interconnection”.
This road to interconnection embodies the top-level design vision of the two central banks and is also engraved with the footprints of pragmatic innovation by all parties in the industry.
As early as 2020, the two countries signed the “Memorandum of Understanding on Establishing a Cooperation Framework for Promoting Local Currency Settlement of Current Account Transactions and Direct Investment”, laying the institutional cornerstone for local currency settlement and payment connectivity.
In 2025, cooperation will enter the fast lane.
In January, UnionPay signed a four-party cooperation memorandum with the Indonesian Payment System Association, Ant International, and Bank of China Hong Kong Jakarta Branch; in May, the two central banks expanded the scope of local currency settlement cooperation from current accounts and direct investments to include all transactions in capital and financial accounts.
In the same month, UnionPay Cloud QuickPass APP, Alipay, BCA Bank, Mandiri Bank, GoPay, ShopeePay and other mainstream Indonesian institutions completed a full-process demonstration of cross-border payment in Jakarta, proving from the technical verification level that “network docking and mutual recognition of standards” are completely feasible.
On September 11, 2025, the two central banks jointly held a launch event and announced the two-way trial operation of the project.
At that time, 33 mainstream local wallets in Indonesia could be used at domestic pilot merchants, and invited users of UnionPay and Alipay successfully paid at approximately 39 million QRIS merchants in Indonesia.
Now in full production, the number of accepting merchants on the Indonesian side has been further expanded to tens of millions of QRIS networks. The scale of Indonesian wallets that can be used directly in China has been further expanded, and more wallets will be included in the future.
From the signing of the memorandum to the integration of the entire scenario, there is a mature mechanism arrangement behind it: UnionPay signed a five-party cooperation agreement with four transfer institutions in Indonesia to undertake the information transfer and clearing of cross-border transactions; Ant International provides technical services, and Bank of China Hong Kong Jakarta Branch participates in localized clearing.
This “government guidance + market operation” model takes into account financial security and market efficiency, and has become a reliable paradigm for cross-border payment infrastructure cooperation.
Behind the full-scale production is the new “four-party model” creatively proposed by UnionPay in industrial practice.
The traditional four-party model is limited to card issuers, acquirers, transfer clearing agencies and merchants. Faced with the rise of multiple entities such as wallets, new acquirers and aggregation service providers in the digital payment era, UnionPay, on the basis of compatibility with the original four-party card network model, has expanded the issuing side to a “pan-account party” covering wallets and industry institutions, and the acquiring side to a “pan-acceptor” including new acquirers and QR code payment service providers.
At the same time, UnionPay has upgraded its role to a three-in-one collaborative platform of “transfer clearing-technology-channels” and made adaptive innovations in profit sharing and business models.
The outstanding advantage of the new “Four Party Model” is its flexibility and openness.
It does not require all parties to become member institutions in the traditional sense. Instead, it agrees on rights and responsibilities through agreements and widely accommodates multiple payment forms such as card-based, code-based, and NFC.
It is based on this structure that mainstream banks such as BCA and Mandiri in Indonesia, as well as technology enterprise wallets such as GoPay and ShopeePay, can seamlessly connect with the UnionPay network. Institutions such as Alipay can also access on an equal basis, jointly weaving a resilient and highly inclusive cross-border payment ecological network.
Inclusiveness and convenience have always been the original intention of payment interconnection.
During the May Day holiday in 2026, the number and amount of QR code-scanning transactions in Indonesia by Chinese domestic wallet users increased by more than 80% compared with the same period in April, and the month-on-month growth rate of Indonesian wallet users’ QR code-scanning transactions in China increased by more than 200%.
Since its trial launch in September 2025, transactions have focused on retail, catering, daily necessities, entertainment and other scenarios closely related to the daily lives of ordinary people.
This “daily, high-frequency” usage experience is just like capillaries that transport the convenience of using local currency to the very end of economic transactions.
The deeper significance of payment facilitation lies in laying a micro-foundation for local currency settlement and RMB internationalization.
According to the local currency settlement mechanism arrangement of the two countries, cross-border transactions between China and Indonesia can be directly settled in RMB and Indonesian Rupiah without going through intermediate currencies such as the US dollar.
Data show that as of 2024, the cross-border RMB settlement amount under the local currency settlement mechanism of the two countries has reached 16.2 billion yuan, and the cumulative direct transaction volume has exceeded 10 billion.
The full commissioning of cross-border QR code interconnection will further extend the use of local currencies from bulk trade and direct investment to retail scenarios such as tourism consumption.
According to estimates, this direct clearing can help merchants save 30% to 50% of settlement costs, while increasing the liquidity and attractiveness of RMB in the region.
The full commissioning of the China-Indonesia project is not an isolated event, but an overall strategic puzzle of UnionPay leading the wave of globalization through interconnection.
UnionPay adheres to the “dual-track parallelism” of G2G and N2N: in Vietnam, it cooperates with NAPAS to realize “scan and pay” with UnionPay cooperative wallets at VietQR Global merchants; in Thailand, UnionPay and cooperative bank APPs are available at nearly 5 million PromptPay merchants; in Cambodia, wallets under the Bakong system can scan codes for payment in China, taking the lead in realizing two-way implementation.
Advances in other markets have been equally rapid.
In Malaysia, interconnection based on the DuitNow standard has already been implemented; in Brazil, it cooperates with PIX network member institutions to promote China-Brazil QR code interconnection; in Nepal, full cooperation with Fonepay will be implemented in May 2026, and more than 2 million merchants will be open to UnionPay wallets within the year.
In addition, the layout of the Middle East and Eurasian markets such as Türkiye and Azerbaijan is also gradually spreading.
The data confirms the acceleration of this network.
From January to May 2026, the number and amount of domestic QR code scanning transactions outsourced by UnionPay doubled year-on-year, and the number of overseas QR code scanning transactions outsourced by UnionPay increased more than three times year-on-year. The value of cross-border interconnection networks is accelerating to be released.
The essence of interconnection is not substitution, but co-construction and sharing.
UnionPay participates in the joint construction of a cross-border QR code unified gateway. Through the standardized service of “one-point access, full network interoperability”, it avoids multiple accesses by overseas institutions and significantly lowers the participation threshold for small and medium-sized institutions. All types of institutions can share the dividends of globalization in equal cooperation.
This approach of focusing on industrial ecological synergy promotes the global payment landscape from “fragmentation” to “diversity and integration”, which in itself is a powerful contribution to the reform of the global financial governance system.
Looking back today, from a few pages of memos to full acceptance by more than 100 million merchants, the China-Indonesia cross-border QR code interconnection project has set a model for the construction of new financial infrastructure in the global digital economy era with the mechanism of “government guidance + market operation”, the inclusive structure of the new “Four-Party Model” and the deep connection of local currency clearing.
Responding to the questions of the times with interconnection and gathering industry synergy with openness and inclusiveness, UnionPay is using payment as a link to connect the world more closely and continue to contribute payment power to building an open world economy and a community with a shared future for mankind.
