China’s Tencent Courts Overseas Visitors With New Payment App

China’s Tencent is reportedly testing an app designed for overseas travelers to its country.

TenPayGo was created to function as a one-stop digital services platform that includes mobile payments, Bloomberg News reported Sunday (June 28), citing Jiemian News. The app, now being tested, lets users spend directly at millions of merchants in China that accept Weixin Pay, letting visitors send and explore China with no need for cash, the report added.

Bloomberg noted that China is seeing a steep increase in foreign visitors, with almost 7 billion cross-border trips logged last year, according to the National Immigration Administration. Overseas nationals made up more than 82 million entries and exits, a 26.4% increase compared to the prior year.

The report added that this increase is indicative of expanded visa-free arrangements and wider travel facilitation measures, which authorities say have made it easier for foreign visitors to come to China for both business and pleasure.

Tencent’s efforts come at a time when digital wallets are evolving from “a more convenient way to pay” to “something more consequential: a platform for managing permissions,” as PYMNTS wrote last week.

This evolution can be seen in two recent developments. Samsung’s launch of Samsung ID with CLEAR lets American passport holders store TSA-approved digital credentials inside Samsung Wallet. Meanwhile Visa and OpenAI announced plans to support payments initiated by artificial intelligence agents operating under consumer-defined rules and controls.

“Viewed separately, one initiative concerns identity and the other payments,” PYMNTS wrote. “Together, they point toward a broader development in digital commerce: identity verification and spending authorization are beginning to reside in the same place.”

The report cited data from PYMNTS Intelligence which suggests consumers, younger ones in particular, are already making digital wallets part of their regular shopping behavior, setting the stage for them to get comfortable using them for other things.

The traditional role of digital wallets, the report continued, was to offer users a place to store payment credentials and make checkout simpler. Today’s wallets, however, house boarding passes, loyalty cards, tickets, digital keys and government credentials.

“A wallet that can prove who a consumer is occupies a different position in the commerce ecosystem than one that simply stores a card number,” PYMNTS wrote. “Identity credentials are difficult to establish, heavily regulated and tied directly to fraud prevention and security requirements. Once consumers rely on a wallet for identity verification, the relationship becomes more durable.”