Tencent’s TenPay Global opens WeChat mini programs to overseas wallets

Visitors from other countries may now use their homegrown wallets inside Mainland China.

TenPay Global Pte. Ltd. is widening access to its vast mini program ecosystem by allowing overseas e-wallets to be used in China — a shift that marks its most ambitious push yet to make global payments smoother and less fragmented.

The move by Tencent’s cross-border payment arm represents a major expansion of a system that once served mainly outbound Chinese travelers.

The company began by letting Chinese consumers scan and pay abroad through WeChat Pay. It is now working in reverse: enabling visitors from other countries to use their homegrown wallets inside Mainland China.

“We started by supporting Chinese travelers to make QR payments in overseas markets,” Yang Wenhui, CEO at TenPay Global and general manager at Tencent Financial Technology, told Asian Banking & Finance on the sidelines of the Singapore Fintech Festival on 13 November. “Today, we are bringing overseas mobile payment tools for use in China.”

WeChat Pay is accepted in 74 countries and regions and over seven million merchants.

Yang said foreign visitors entering China surged in 2023 as borders reopened after the coronavirus pandemic. That sentiment helped shape the company’s shift to an inbound-first strategy.

“We decided to open up the Tencent ecosystem to welcome international travellers,” he said.

Launched in November, TenPay Global Checkout lets merchants operating inside WeChat mini programs accept payments from overseas e-wallets and international cards.

Mini programs are bite-sized apps built inside WeChat that let users shop, play games, book medical appointments, collect rewards, and complete other tasks without leaving the platform.

The service went live first in Singapore and Macau and will extend to other markets including Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.
Yang said the expansion rests on a simple question: how to make payments easier for non-Chinese users navigating China’s tightly integrated digital ecosystem. “After a few years, we realized this is good, but we can make it better,” he said.

He cited interoperability as the key. “We feel that the integration of different payment ideas and systems will happen. Eventually, it’s going to be a less fragmented system.”

TenPay Global describes its cross-border model as “1+1+1”: Tencent’s payment infrastructure combined with financial partners and overseas lifestyle platforms. The approach aligns with Beijing’s national push for stronger cross-border payment linkages. TenPay Global is one of the designated foreign-institution partners of China’s Cross-Border Interconnection Payment Gateway.

Yang said no single company could create a fully interoperable global payment system. “It has to be an industry movement. The public and private sectors need to play their role,” he added. International partners “overwhelmingly” expressed interest once access opened.

Since the gateway initiative launched in September, more than 40 partners across 10 countries and regions have joined TenPay Global’s network, Yang said. Participants include DBS PayLah! and GrabPay in Singapore, Maya in the Philippines, PayPal and Venmo in the US, and Kasikornbank in Thailand.

Yang said the company aims to build at least one reliable corridor for interconnected payments. “We are quite committed to bringing other mobile payment tools back to the country,” he said.

He called on the broader financial sector to collaborate. “Let’s enable the domestic payment infrastructure to welcome international payment tools as much as possible, and as convenient as possible,” he said.

Yang expects rapid advances in digital payments.

“There will be fresh technologies and trials across different parts of the ecosystem,” he said.