Executive Summary
In 2025–2026, China's payment industry formally entered the deep waters of globalization. Against the backdrop of a highly mature domestic market and continuously shrinking competitive margins, payment institutions with capital strength and compliance capabilities are accelerating their overseas expansion through license deployment, system construction, and localized operations, gradually integrating into the global payment and settlement system.
This report focuses on the structural drivers, core barriers, operating costs, and regional opportunities of Chinese payment institutions' "going global" strategy, and provides forward-looking assessments of future industry competitive landscape.
I. Domestic Fundamentals: Structural Concentration Under Stock Competition
China's payment market has completed the transition from rapid expansion to a phase of high concentration and strong regulation.
1. Industry Consolidation and License Structure Optimization
As of the end of 2025, regulators have continuously promoted standardized development of the payment industry, cumulatively revoking over one hundred payment business licenses, with the number of industry licenses significantly converging from peak levels.
This process is not a simple contraction, but a systematic optimization of market structure: institutions lacking compliance capabilities, technological investment, and stable business scenarios are gradually exiting, with industry concentration significantly increasing.
2. Capital Reinvestment Trends Among Leading Institutions
Synchronous with the exit of small and medium institutions, leading platforms continue to increase capital investment to consolidate compliance foundations and technical capabilities:
- Tenpay's registered capital increased to the 20 billion yuan level;
- Multiple internet platforms completed capital increases ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of yuan.
The core purpose of these actions is not short-term market expansion, but to reserve sufficient capital buffers for cross-regional operations, overseas compliance, and system construction.
3. Revenue Structure Comparison: Objective Differences in Growth Space
| Dimension | Domestic Market | Cross-border/Overseas Market | |-----------|----------------|------------------------------| | Average Comprehensive Fee Rate | 0.3%–0.6% | 1.5%–3.0% | | Profit Structure | High competition, low elasticity | Service capability-driven | | Core Barriers | Traffic and subsidies | Licenses, risk control, systems |
Overseas business is not "high-risk arbitrage," but a scalable business model based on long-term service premiums.
II. Entry Barriers: License System and Time Capital
The primary barrier to payment going global is compliance access capability.
1. Access Cost Characteristics in Major Markets
Taking the United States as an example, currency service-related businesses require completion of state-level license applications, with the following overall characteristics:
- Review Cycle: Typically requires 12–18 months;
- Bond Requirements: Significant differences across states;
- Ongoing Costs: Including audits, compliance reports, system maintenance, etc.
Licenses themselves are not one-time assets, but the external manifestation of sustained operational capability.
2. Non-linear Returns from License Accumulation
Industry experience shows that overseas growth of payment institutions typically exhibits "plateau period—leap period" characteristics:
- Early investment is concentrated on compliance, systems, and customer structure;
- Once cross-regional network effects are formed, scale expansion speed significantly increases.
This pattern has been verified in the development paths of multiple internationalized payment enterprises.
III. Operating Cost Reassessment: Compliance Systems and Professional Talent
The core cost of overseas payment business is not market promotion, but sustained compliance capability.
1. Coordination Pressure from Multi-regional Regulation
Different jurisdictions have clear requirements for data protection, operational resilience, anti-money laundering, etc. Enterprises need to establish unified but locally adaptable compliance frameworks to ensure long-term stable operations.
2. Long-term Investment Attributes of Professional Talent
Cross-border payment highly depends on composite talent in compliance, risk control, technology, and operations, with cost structures exhibiting significant internationalization characteristics.
In the long term, only sufficient business scale can effectively amortize such fixed costs.
IV. Payment Role Upgrade from Industrial Collaboration Perspective
As Chinese manufacturing and service enterprises accelerate global deployment, the functions of payment systems are changing.
1. From "Transaction Tool" to "Operational Infrastructure"
In the process of overseas operations, enterprises generally need stable, efficient, and transparent fund management and settlement support. The value of payment institutions is extending from single transaction processing to account systems, fund flow management, and risk control support.
2. Medium to Long-term Positioning of Payment Institutions
Future leading payment platforms are more likely to play the role of financial infrastructure service providers, offering enterprises integrated solutions covering transactions, settlement, reconciliation, and data support.
V. Regional Layout and Global Operation Strategy
1. Multi-regional Parallel Market Selection
In the globalization process, payment institutions typically adopt multi-market collaborative deployment strategies to diversify operational risks and enhance service coverage capabilities.
- Emerging markets such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia have good digital foundations and growth potential;
- Mature markets emphasize compliance depth and service quality.
2. Distributed Design of Operational Structure
By establishing multiple regional operation centers, payment institutions can better adapt to local regulatory environments and enhance the stability and resilience of the overall system.
VI. Conclusion: Industry Evolution Under Long-termism
Payment going global has evolved from early market exploration to a long-term competitive phase centered on compliance and infrastructure.
- Short-term arbitrage opportunities are disappearing;
- Capital, technology, and compliance capabilities have become decisive factors;
- Industry returns are more oriented toward patience and scaled operations.
Conclusion: After 2026, the globalization competition of Chinese payment institutions will no longer depend on product features, but on who can continuously, stably, and compliantly provide financial infrastructure services under different legal systems.