Overall, there are more than 950,000 foreigners working in China, and the country has cumulatively issued 336,000 overseas talent work permits in 2018. Further, the Minister of Science and Technology believes that China is also attracting foreign talent looking to start innovative businesses in the country. However, the number of foreigners - professionals and tourists - coming into China is also growing year-on-year and hence, WeChat decided to look for a solution.Īccording to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of inbound tourists reached 141.2 million in 2018, an increase of 1.2 percent over the same period of the previous year. Over the past year or two, WeChat and its biggest competitor Alipay have worked hard to forge partnerships that assist Chinese tourists traveling overseas. While China’s mobile payment networks have been closed off to foreign-issued credit cards, domestically issued credit cards under Visa and Mastercard have long been supported.As a result of the collaboration, overseas users will now be able to use WeChat Pay across multiple payment scenarios spanning shopping, restaurants, transportation, and accommodation.įor instance, overseas users can use WeChat Pay to purchase railway tickets on China Railway (hail a ride on the Didi (China’s Uber/Grab), make online purchases via JD.com and Ctrip, and more. Visa and Mastercard have not replied to Reuters’ requests for comments. Overseas tourists including those from Hong Kong and Macau spent US$131 billion in mainland China in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. “Our efforts to further open payment services to visitors coincide with the full resumption of travel and tourism to China, as well as major upcoming international events in the country scheduled this year,” Tencent said in a statement on Wednesday. Now, Tencent and Ant are opening up their entire ecosystems to foreign cards, allowing visitors to pay for a host of goods and services ranging from a quick meal at a food truck to life insurance. To be sure, Tencent’s and Ant’s partnerships with Visa and Mastercard in 2019 already allowed some overseas users to use their credit cards in China but at the time only select businesses were allowed to process international credit cards. Under the new setup, international travelers can set up their foreign cards on these apps with a few simple steps. However, the plans have regained momentum as China began reopening this year. But as China closed its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic and international arrivals to the country plummeted, such initiatives had taken a back seat, two people familiar with the matter said. Tencent and Ant had formed partnerships with Visa and Mastercard in 2019 to make foreign cards usable on their platforms. Prior to the easy card linkage change, foreigners in China typically needed to set up a Chinese bank account to access Tencent’s and Ant’s mobile payment networks. Foreign visitors often find themselves unable to pay for things in China where many shops and restaurants now only accept mobile payment rather than credit cards or cash. Alipay is the mobile payment app owned by Ant.Ĭhina’s mobile payment network became highly closed-off to overseas tourists since mobile apps became the predominant payment method in the country in the late 2010s, triggering a boom in ecommerce. This comes after Mastercard (MA.N) announced last week that cardholders can link credit or debit cards to the Alipay digital wallet where they can finally “pay like a local”. Foreign tourists can then pay with WeChat when traveling in mainland China. Tencent, operator of the popular chat app WeChat and payment network WeChat Pay, said on Wednesday that WeChat users overseas can link credit cards issued by Visa Inc (V.N) to their WeChat app from next month. HONG KONG, June 28 (Reuters) - Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) and Ant Group said that they would allow users to link international credit cards to their platforms, an issue that has long plagued foreign visitors as the country’s payment system has kept credit cards out for years.
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