Singapore-based cross-border payments network Thunes has partnered with Tencent Financial Technology, Tencent ’s fintech arm. Through the partnership, Thunes has reportedly become the first payment infrastructure partner connecting with Tencent.

This collaboration will allow members of Thunes’ global network to send international payments to Weixin users, thus offering them fast and easy access to the Chinese market. Weixin, the domestic version of the internationally known WeChat, facilitates one of China's most popular payment methods Weixin Pay, with the majority of Weixin and WeChat’s 1. 3 billion users concentrated in China.

Current and new members of Thunes' global network can send payments to Weixin users in China, creating additional revenue opportunities for them: from a Chinese engineer in East Africa looking to send money to family back home, to young professionals working in the US wanting to transfer money to their parents in China. Daphne Huang, SVP APAC, Thunes explained that China is now seen as a global leader in digital payments and payment innovation, and mobile payments are at the forefront of the evolution. Thunes’s expansion strategy in Asia The news follows Thunes’ announcement of plans to ramp up partnerships and accelerate its expansion in January 2022.

At the time, the company committed to intensify its focus on building local partnerships with local digital payment players to enable businesses and consumers to make payments to and from China, supporting business payments, global collections, and virtual accounts setup. Thunes also piloted its virtual account service to connect China-based payment service providers to Indonesia ecommerce buyers. In August 2022, Thunes, partnered with Alipay+, a suite of cross-border payments and marketing solutions operated by Ant Group.

Thanks to this collaboration, Thunes’ customers and merchants in Europe were able to accept Asia’s most popular mobile wallets: China’s Alipay, Malaysia’s Touch ’n Go and Boost, Philippines’ GCash, South Korea’s KakaoPay, Thailand’s Rabbit LINE Pay and TrueMoney. The partnership with Alipay+, paired with this most recent one with Tencent, effectively expanded the geographical coverage of the local payment methods available via Thunes: the company already offers a range of alternative payment methods (APMs) popular with customers in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and now Asia. .