As consumers move abroad, many still need reliable ways to send money back home. To this end, an integration between Mastercard Move and Tencent’s cross-border payments solution marks a significant step for those sending remittances to China.
The partnership will enable digital remittances to Weixin Pay, the mobile payment platform within China’s Weixin ecosystem. This opens access to cross-border transfers for more than 1.4 billion users of Weixin and WeChat.
Since Mastercard Move currently connects to roughly 10 billion financial services endpoints worldwide, senders can take advantage of a vast global network. Funds can be delivered either to Weixin Pay wallet balances or to bank cards linked to the mobile wallet.
Searching for a Solution
Sending money across borders has traditionally been a convoluted process involving multiple intermediaries, often making it costly and time-consuming.
Many solutions have been proposed to address the pain points of cross-border payments. Digital assets—particularly stablecoins—are frequently highlighted because they can enable immediate, low-cost transactions that settle on secure and transparent blockchains.
However, stablecoins have faced pushback due to their heavy reliance on the U.S. dollar. This is one reason European lawmakers have shown a preference for a central bank digital currency, such as the digital euro, over privately issued stablecoins. What’s more, there are concerns that the rise of stablecoins has weakened some emerging market currencies, as users often prefer the relative stability of the U.S. dollar over their domestic currency.
The Market Remains Fragmented
All these issues mean that an overarching, global payment type is unlikely to emerge anytime soon. Instead, more solutions have taken the approach of interlinking domestic payments systems. For example, PayPal recently launched its cross-border payments arm, which connects with both WeChat Pay and India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI).
Mastercard Move, along with Visa Direct, have also forged significant connections with many financial institutions and platforms across their ever-expanding networks. These platforms function as a supercharged version of the correspondent banking system, where banks can perform nearly real-time, secure, and transparent cross-border payments.
While connecting local digital payment systems is an important step toward improving cross-border remittances and payments, the market remains fragmented. For instance, the Mastercard Move and Tencent integration is notable, but WeChat Pay represents around half of China’s market; the other half is dominated by Ant Group’s Alipay.
