Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, June 28 (Reuters)-Tencent Holdings and Ant Financial Services Group have said they will allow users to connect overseas credit cards to their payment platforms to facilitate foreign tourists to spend in China.

▲ image source Pixabay Tencent said today that from next month, overseas Wechat users can bind VISA credit cards to WeChat Pay, and foreign tourists can directly use WeChat Pay when visiting China.

MasterCard, on the other hand, announced last week that overseas cardholders can associate credit or debit cards with Alipay digital wallets to "pay like locals".

Previously, foreigners in China usually had to set up a Chinese bank account to access the mobile payment networks of Tencent and Ant Financial Services Group. In 2019, Tencent and Ant Financial Services Group established partnerships with VISA and MasterCard and allowed foreign bank cards to be bound to the payment platforms of the two companies. However, with the arrival of the COVID-19 epidemic and the sharp decline in the number of international tourists, these measures were shelved for a time.

The new policy will allow Tencent and Ant Financial Services Group to open up their entire ecosystem to foreign bank cards, allowing foreign tourists to use everything from buying fast food to launching life insurance.

"our efforts to further open payment services to overseas tourists coincide with the full recovery of China's tourism industry and a series of major international events to be held in China," Tencent said in a statement. " Previous data showed that overseas tourists, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, spent US $131 billion on Chinese mainland in 2019 before the outbreak (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 945.82 billion yuan).

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