Payments Research

Feb

WeChat Pay approved to operate in Nepal

China’s fintech giants have been quietly expanding in emerging markets that are participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which seeks to deepen Beijing’s economic ties with the world. South Asia has become a geographic area of focus for Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay. Aside from India,…

Feb

India Payments Research

Paytm shifts focus to merchants as it looks to narrow gap with rivals

India fintech unicorn Paytm is shifting its focus to merchants in a bid to better compete with rivals Google Pay and Walmart-backed PhonePe. Paytm lags those two firms in its share of the transactions on India’s state-backed real-time UPI payments system. As of October, UPI handled more than 50% of…

Feb

China Payments Research

Mastercard prepares for its belated China arrival

Reform is coming to China’s US$27 trillion payments market belatedly. Very belatedly. U.S. credit-card giants have been trying to crack the market for years, to no avail. The market should have been open to them by 2006, per China’s WTO commitments. But Beijing has hesitated to open its financial industry…

Contact Info