Tencent Launches Cross-Border Payment Platform for E-Commerce Business
Chinese leading tech player Tencent recently launched a cross-border payment platform named “Tenpay Global Business”, which provides a one-stop solution for services such as global collection, payment and exchange for cross-border e-commerce sellers and e-commerce platforms, with a minimum withdrawal fee of 5/10,000.
“Tenpay Global Business” currently supports transactions in more than 20 global currencies, and merchants can access its services through the company’s official website and the account found on Tencent-backed social app Weixin. The service is allowed to conduct payments, foreign exchange business and cross-border RMB settlement in mainland China. It has also obtained a license as a money service operator and stored value facility license in Hong Kong, and a major payment institution license in Singapore.
Tencent‘s new platform has clear advantages in several major aspects that merchants are most concerned about, such as handling fees, arrival time and real-time exchange rates, and has reached agreements with mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, MercadoLibre and Cdiscount.
“The cross-border e-commerce market has a strong vitality and growth resilience. The extensive participation of small and micro merchants has provided a large number of jobs for young people.” Royal Chen, vice president of Tencent Financial Technology, said, “We hope to help the cross-border e-commerce settlement channels to be further smoothed out and to contribute to the resumption of production of Chinese enterprises in the post-epidemic era.”
Since the outbreak in 2020, the scale of online shopping around the world has surged. According to the General Administration of Customs in China, the import and export scale of cross-border e-commerce in China reached 1.98 trillion yuan ($288 billion) in 2021. iiMedia Research predicts that by 2024, the scale of cross-border e-commerce in China is expected to reach 3 trillion yuan.
Since the lifting of strict epidemic prevention and control policies in China at the end of 2022, international trade and cross-border consumption have recovered strongly at the beginning of 2023. According to China’s Administration of Immigration, during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday this year, there were more than 2.87 million people leaving the country for a trip or other reasons, with an average daily number of 410,000, an increase of 120.5% over the same period of last year’s Spring Festival. In addition, the data from UnionPay International, a subsidiary of China UnionPay, shows that during the Spring Festival of 2023, the transaction amount of domestic consumers using UnionPay cards at overseas ATMs and stores increased by about 60%.
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In terms of policy, in June 2022, the People’s Bank of China issued a notice, supporting domestic banks to cooperate with non-bank payment institutions and clearing institutions with legal qualifications to provide cross-border RMB settlement services.
