Ant and Tencent Revive Efforts to Accept Foreign Credit Cards in China

Chinese tech companies Ant Group Co. Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. (TCEHY) will permit users to make payments through their platforms using foreign credit cards, the resumption of a broader effort to expand payment services to international users after COVID-related shutdowns stymied earlier efforts.

Tencent said on June 28 that users of its WeChat Pay network would be able to link foreign cards issued by Visa Inc. (V) beginning in July. Mastercard Inc. (MA) announced on June 21 that cardholders will be able to link existing cards to a digital wallet by Alipay, the payment platform operated by Ant.

Mobile payment apps became the most popular—and in many cases the exclusive—way of making payments in China in the late 2010s. While this has been a boon for e-commerce in the country, it means that foreign visitors are often unable to pay for things when merchants only accept mobile payments. The solution up to this point has often been to set up a Chinese bank account to access Tencent's or Ant's platforms.

Process Began in 2019 But Sidelined by COVID

Ant's partnership with Mastercard and Tencent's with Visa both began in 2019, providing foreign users the ability to use their non-Chinese credit cards at select businesses. These initiatives lost momentum as the country shuttered due to COVID-19 and international visitor rates plummeted.

The announcements in the last week are an expansion of those earlier partnerships, and now overseas visitors will be able to use their foreign credit cards to pay for goods and services across the entire WeChat or Alipay networks simply by linking their cards.

There is the potential for significant spending on these platforms. Foreign tourists spent $131 billion in mainland China in 2019, and global leisure travel bookings for March 2023 were up 31% from March 2019.