[Big News] PAYPAL Can Now Be Used in China

Tencent and PayPal have gone and done it: as of yesterday, PayPal is rolling out WeChat integration using US users as the first batch that can scan WeChat Pay QR codes and spend money at merchants across China, which is to say they can now do the thing that every single person living in China has been doing on their phone for roughly a decade, except with an app that normal people in America actually have.

So, as of today, you can open your PayPal and use the scan function by pointing it at a WeChat QR Code.

This is, genuinely, a big deal. You can go entire months in China without touching physical cash, which means foreign visitors have historically arrived, looked at the QR code on the noodle stall, and quietly died a little inside. Your Visa card? Charming. Your Mastercard? Adorable. Your tears? Priceless, but non-transferable.

Now, via Tencent's cross-border payment platform TenPay Global and its new connection to PayPal World, Americans can open their PayPal wallet and either scan a merchant's QR code or show their own payment code to be scanned, which covers everything from the big mall in Jing'an to the street-side breakfast stall where they definitely do not have a point-of-sale terminal but absolutely have a laminated QR code taped to the counter. Merchants don't need to change any equipment or generate new codes. It just works. (WeChat Pay's official announcement described the whole thing as 丝滑, which translates roughly as "silky smooth," which we can be down for.)

The partnership has been in the works since early 2025, when PayPal and Tencent first announced they'd be letting US, Canadian, and European users send money directly into WeChat Pay wallets. Today is when it arrived at the merchant level, which is the part that matters to anyone who has ever stood at a tea shop in Jing'an trying to explain to a very patient cashier that yes, their phone exists and yes, it does in theory contain money.

Incase You Just Want to Stick with WeChat Pay

If you'd rather skip PayPal entirely, WeChat has also quietly made the direct foreign card route more attractive. First-time users who link a Visa or Mastercard get ninety days where the standard 3% foreign card fee is waived on daily transactions up to 1,000 yuan. Everyone else gets the fee waived on any single transaction under 200rm. (200 yuan buys you a solid lunch for two in most of Shanghai. This is a reasonable threshold. They have thought about this.)

While they were at it, WeChat Pay also reminded everyone that the broader mini programs ecosystem now covers public transit, high-speed rail tickets, food delivery, hotel check-in, entry declarations, and scenic area tickets, all of it accessible in 18 languages, meaning you can theoretically arrive in China, navigate the entire country, eat extremely well, and get home again. Whether this actually works as advertised is a question for someone braver than us, but the infrastructure is there.

Tencent says they'll expand access to PayPal users in other markets in phases, which is good news for those outside the US who use Paypal.

Which, for anyone who has ever had to beg a local friend to WeChat Pay the hotpot bill on their behalf because your Alipay's overseas card integration was being weird again, feels pretty reasonable.

The most Chinese payments platform in the world, and now your boring American fintech app can use it. They connected them. They connected them!