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Apart from social media and messaging, Tencent’s WeChat offers
payment services called WeChat Pay, or Weixin Pay, in mainland
China. Tencent said in a statement that the feature will be
available to U.S.-based PayPal users first, with more markets to
follow.
Since cashless payments have become increasingly common in
China, the move is likely to provide greater convenience to
foreign visitors.
WeChat Pay and Ant Group’s Alipay, part of the Alibaba
e-commerce empire, are widely available across China including
in taxis and restaurants.
Making cashless payments easier for tourists aligns with China’s
efforts to bring in more foreign tourists, said Gary Ng, a
senior economist for Asia Pacific at French bank Natixis.
Tourism contributed more than 4% of China’s economy in 2024,
official data show.
China has been expanding visa free access to travelers from
dozens of countries including the U.K., Spain and Australia.
That change has not yet been extended to U.S. travelers, who
still need a visa to enter China, except for brief transits for
those heading on to third countries.
The number of foreign visitors, excluding those from Hong Kong
and Taiwan, plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when China
closed its doors to most foreign arrivals and imposed stringent
quarantines in many places.
But it has since surged past the nearly 32 million visitors
recorded in 2019, to over 35 million last year.
Ng said the PayPal move also aligns with a global trend of
integration of payment platforms through mutually recognized
cross-border QR codes.
Ivan Su, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said the impact
of the QR code option with PayPal initially may be limited in
terms of its overall benefit for Tencent given the current low
volume of U.S. travelers to China.
WeChat Pay has allowed users to link their foreign bank cards
since 2019. Tencent also said it will also be offering a
transaction fee waiver for first time users linking their
international bank cards to WeChat to encourage wider use of
that option.
Tencent said such transactions by foreign travelers in China
jumped nearly 80% year-on-year in January-April.
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