There are new actions in cross-border payment interconnectivity. WeChat Pay recently announced that payment QR codes from five countries, including South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, will be integrated into WeChat Pay. That is to say, in these five countries, users do not need to search for WeChat QR codes, but can use WeChat Pay to scan the QR code of the local payment platform and make payments like locals. The person in charge of WeChat Pay introduced that the integration of QR codes on these five payment platforms is not a single point of cooperation among individual merchants, but rather a comprehensive and compliant interoperability between WeChat Pay and the payment infrastructure of relevant countries. Compared to the cumbersome process of switching between multiple payment apps or exchanging foreign currency in advance for outbound travel in the past, Chinese tourists now only need to carry a mobile phone and open WeChat to easily achieve offline consumption in various scenarios in related countries, without the need to learn new operations. Currently, the sustained popularity of outbound and inbound tourism has brought more demand and opportunities for cross-border payments. According to data released by the National Immigration Administration, a total of 185 million inbound and outbound personnel were inspected in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 13.5% year-on-year. WeChat payment, Alipay and other platforms continue to expand the breadth and depth of cross-border payment. At present, WeChat cross-border payment has covered 78 countries and regions worldwide, supporting 36 currencies. Alipay+, a global wallet integration gateway under Ant International, connects over 40 electronic wallets worldwide. By 2025, it has partnered with QR code networks in more than 10 countries, covering over 150 million merchants and 1.8 billion consumer accounts in more than 100 markets worldwide. While facilitating outbound payment and consumption, in order to optimize the inbound payment experience, China, on the one hand, promotes "bundling foreign cards with internal ones". Overseas bank cards can be tied to Alipay or WeChat for consumption in domestic merchants, and on the other hand, supports "outsourcing for internal use". More and more overseas e-wallets can be used in China through cooperation with domestic payment institutions. Data shows that WeChat Pay and Tencent's cross-border payment platform TenPay Global have joined the cross-border QR code unified gateway and are promoting interoperability and cooperation with more than 40 overseas wallet institutions worldwide. In 2025, more than 10 million inbound users will use Alipay's two types of convenient payment services: "external card internal binding" and Alipay+"outsourcing internal use", and the related inbound consumption will increase by more than 100% year on year. In recent years, China's payment industry has made continuous progress, with multiple types of barcodes recognized and scanned, multiple countries' QR code networks interconnected, and business rules coordinated and improved. At the same time, a series of open and interconnected achievements, such as the interconnection of fast payment systems between mainland China and Hong Kong, the trial operation of the cross-border QR code unified gateway, and the launch of the China Indonesia cross-border QR code interconnection project, have attracted attention. The international influence and competitiveness of China's payment industry continue to improve. The 2026 Payment and Settlement Work Conference held by the People's Bank of China in January this year clearly proposed to accelerate the construction of the RMB cross-border payment system, promote cross-border payment interconnection, and promote the diversified and multi-level development of the cross-border payment system in 2026. Experts say that China's payment industry is constantly moving towards openness and interconnection, which not only facilitates users' payment and consumption, but also promotes the industry to achieve a leap from "big" to "strong". The payment industry is gathering development momentum, better connecting the Chinese economy with the global economy, and contributing to the "Chinese solution" for global regional payment interconnection. (New Society)