Ant Group's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat Pay jointly committed to China's Cross-border Interconnection Payment Gateway initiative on 17 September 2025, a move that allows foreign digital wallet holders to pay at merchants across China using a QR code without needing to open a local bank account or obtain a Chinese wallet. The commitment by the country's two dominant payments platforms marks a substantive step in making China's cashless retail infrastructure accessible to international visitors and tourists who have long found the ecosystem difficult to navigate from outside. The gateway provides a standardised interface through which foreign wallets can route payments into the domestic merchant acceptance network.
The gateway pilot had been running since the end of July 2025, and by mid-September it had already facilitated nearly two million transactions totalling RMB 427 million, reflecting robust early demand from international users. The formal commitment by Alipay and WeChat Pay consolidates what had been a fragmented trial arrangement into a structured cross-border payments framework with the backing of the platforms that collectively dominate Chinese mobile payments. The pilot's early transaction volumes suggest that unmet demand from foreign visitors has been considerable.
WALLET COVERAGE EXTENDS ACROSS ASIA
Alipay expanded its support under the initiative to cover international wallets from 12 countries, including Indonesia, Uzbekistan, and Thailand, allowing users of those applications to pay within its merchant network using existing credentials from their home market without any conversion of funds into a locally held account. WeChat Pay moved to accommodate 16 international digital wallets, broadening the pool of foreign users who can transact seamlessly on the platform. Together, the two commitments represent a meaningful expansion of the gateway's effective reach, given the size of Alipay's and WeChat Pay's merchant acceptance networks across retail, hospitality, dining, and transport.
The breadth of wallet partnerships signals an intent to position China's QR-code payments ecosystem as a globally accessible standard rather than a domestically ring-fenced system. For merchants — particularly those in sectors with high exposure to inbound tourism such as retail, hospitality, and cultural venues — the change removes friction that had long deterred foreign visitors from using China's predominantly cashless point-of-sale infrastructure. Many international travellers had previously resorted to carrying cash specifically because mobile payment options required Chinese bank linkage they could not obtain.
GATEWAY SIGNALS PAYMENTS OPENING
The Cross-border Interconnection Payment Gateway is part of a broader policy direction that encourages regulated interoperability between China's domestic payments rails and international wallet providers. By routing foreign wallets through an approved gateway rather than requiring bilateral integrations between individual operators, the framework offers a more scalable and supervisable model for expanding acceptance coverage over time. The central role of regulators in establishing and overseeing the gateway distinguishes it from purely market-driven interoperability arrangements seen in other markets.
The near-two-million transactions recorded in the pilot's first six weeks suggest that adoption has been faster than some observers anticipated. With Alipay and WeChat Pay now formally aligned with the initiative, the network of participating merchants and compatible international wallets is expected to grow further, deepening the practical utility of the gateway for the millions of foreign nationals who visit China each year for business, leisure, or study. The success of the pilot phase will likely inform decisions about expanding the gateway to additional wallet providers and potentially broadening the categories of merchants and payment scenarios it covers.