Recently, Tencent’s cross-border payment platform TenPay Global and global payment giant PayPal World announced their interconnection.
After PayPal users come to China, they do not need to download WeChat or exchange RMB. They can directly open their PayPal wallet and make smooth purchases at tens of millions of WeChat payment merchants in China.
The service will be available to US users in the first phase, and other markets will be accessible in phases.
This is not a simple technical interface docking.
In the global chess game of the two institutions, this is a key move to “compensate for each other’s weaknesses”.
For PayPal, this is the opening it has finally made in China’s offline consumption scene after many years of searching; for WeChat Pay, it is an important part of improving its “inbound payment” territory and building a closed-loop cross-border service.
From the user’s perspective, the core breakthrough of this cooperation lies in the simplicity of the payment process.
Previously, the mainstream method for overseas tourists to use mobile payment in China was “bundling a foreign card inside”.
Users need to bind their overseas bank cards to WeChat Pay or Alipay, but they still need to download the domestic APP and complete real-name authentication.
For short-term travelers, this process is still cumbersome.
The cooperation model between WeChat Pay and PayPal is called “outsourcing and internal use”: when PayPal users from around the world come to China, whether they actively scan the code or present the payment code, as long as they open their PayPal wallet, they can make smooth purchases among tens of millions of WeChat Pay merchants in China.
However, the service will be open to PayPal users in the United States in the first phase, and other markets will also be connected in stages.
In fact, Tencent used the “outsourcing and internal use” model through the WeChat Hong Kong dollar wallet as early as 2018.
Hong Kong dollar wallet users can open their familiar e-wallet and scan the QR code to make purchases in the Mainland without opening an additional account.
Today, 36 overseas cooperative wallets have been launched, and Tencent continues to introduce more e-wallets from APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) economies.
A phenomenon worthy of attention is that inbound consumer demand is recovering rapidly.
WeChat payment data also confirms this trend: from January to April 2026, the number of foreign tourists using WeChat to bind international bank cards in China increased by nearly 80% year-on-year.
WeChat Pay chose to connect to PayPal at this time, aiming at the incremental market of card slots.
In the context of the domestic mobile payment market being basically saturated, finding a new growth curve has become a common issue for the two giants.
One of Tencent’s paths is “cross-border”, which includes both overseas payments by Chinese people going abroad and consumption payments by foreigners entering the country.
By connecting with PayPal users, WeChat Pay can gain a huge entrance to overseas traffic.
In recent years, the once global payments giant has been in a worrying situation.
On February 3, 2026, PayPal announced its fourth quarter financial report for fiscal year 2025. The growth of its core business slowed down significantly: the growth rate of PayPal brand checkout active users dropped to 1%, far lower than the 6% in the same period last year; the transaction volume of active accounts in the past 12 months fell by 5% year-on-year.
PayPal’s stock price plummeted 20% in a single day after the earnings report was released.
PayPal’s market value has shrunk significantly from its historical peak of approximately US$360 billion in 2021 to approximately US$38 billion in early February 2026.
In the Chinese market, PayPal has always struggled to expand.
It relies on Guofubao to carry out cross-border payment business in China, but it has never been able to penetrate the massive domestic offline consumption scenarios, and its personal payment influence is limited.
For PayPal, the interconnection with WeChat Pay is an important turning point for it to break through the difficulties in the Chinese market. This allows PayPal to access tens of millions of WeChat Pay merchant networks with extremely low technology and customer acquisition costs, making up for its key shortcomings in offline acceptance capabilities in China.
“This is one of the manifestations of the two giants’ support for the central bank’s unified gateway construction. It is also a key step in facilitating the payment of overseas personnel in China, especially under the APEC framework.” Wang Pengbo, a senior analyst in the financial industry of Broadcom Analysis, believes that this cooperation has opened up the consumption path of tens of millions of merchants in China for American users.
From the perspective of transaction scale, WeChat Pay’s foreign card transaction volume will also be significantly increased in the short term, especially in high-frequency scenarios such as tourism and retail. In the medium and long term, it is expected to drive more international wallets to access, forming a network effect of one-time connection and reuse in multiple countries.
The cross-border QR code unified gateway (referred to as the “unified gateway”) is the basis for the successful cooperation between WeChat Pay and PayPal.
It is understood that the unified gateway supports domestic and foreign participating institutions to carry out cross-border QR code payment cooperation through “one-point docking”.
Specifically, the unified gateway provides domestic and foreign participating institutions with unified technical interfaces, cross-border transaction information transfer and distribution, transaction monitoring and analysis and other services, and supports participating institutions to provide more efficient, convenient and secure cross-border QR code payment services for domestic and foreign users.
“In the past, cooperation between overseas wallets and domestic payment systems required point-to-point connection, with high technical costs, inconsistent standards, and disorderly competition among some institutions, making it difficult to form synergy.” Dong Ximiao, chief economist of China Merchants Union and deputy director of Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, believes that the cross-border QR code unified gateway is a major infrastructure innovation for cross-border interconnection in China’s payment and clearing field.
The access of WeChat Pay and PayPal is a strong proof that the gateway system has moved from technology pilot to large-scale application. It also marks a substantial transition of cross-border payment infrastructure from “interconnection” to “interoperability”.
Another larger background is the immigration facilitation policy.
At the beginning of 2026, the “Implementation Opinions on Improving the Convenience of Digital Entry Services for Overseas Personnel” jointly issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China and other 11 departments clearly stated that by 2027, the internationalization and convenience of entry digital services will be significantly improved, digital basic services will be smoother and more efficient, and digital application service blocking points in the fields of residence, medical care, payment, tourism, and public services will be basically cleared, and application scenarios will be comprehensively expanded, injecting strong vitality into expanding high-level opening up to the outside world.
Dong Ximiao said, “Payment facilitation is a key part of unlocking the consumption potential of overseas people in China. It is foreseeable that as mainstream overseas wallets gradually connect to the unified gateway, more American users and tourists from other countries will enjoy consumption in China more smoothly. China’s digital payment business card has become a global
The attractiveness within the scope will be further enhanced and will inject stronger vitality into the expansion of high-level opening up to the outside world.”
It is worth noting that in recent years, domestic payment institutions, overseas card organizations, international payment giants and overseas wallets have all carried out many practices in optimizing payment services in China.
For example, the “Nihao China” App launched by China UnionPay supports the recharge of UnionPay external cards and international mainstream bank cards such as Visa and MasterCard, and supports diversified payments in online and offline consumption scenarios; Alipay’s “External Card Binding” allows foreigners to bind Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Discover, and Diners Club after downloading the Alipay App.
Seven major international bank cards including International and American Express; Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc. support “snap card through the gate” in the Beijing subway.
Wang Pengbo analyzed that the Chinese market is still very attractive to overseas card organizations, payment giants and other institutions. This also reflects that China’s mobile payment is shifting from one-way output to two-way compatibility. Domestic institutions continue to optimize related technologies and services, and overseas card organizations and payment institutions are also actively adapting to China’s local acceptance environment. This “two-way rush” is not only due to policy guidance, but also driven by real market demand.
