Visa’s new relationship with UnionPay International opens a tightly controlled corridor for cross‑border payouts into mainland China
Visa has partnered with UnionPay International to allow businesses and consumers to send money directly into mainland China through Visa Direct.
Announced at Web Summit Qatar on February 3 2026, the deal links Visa Direct with UnionPay International’s MoneyExpress platform, allowing remittances and business payouts to reach over 95% of UnionPay debit cardholders in mainland China.
With the service expected to launch in the first half of this year, the agreement opens up one of the world’s largest and most tightly controlled payments markets.
Visa Direct Global Head Vira Platonova said the deal shows how payments infrastructure is racing to catch up with global commerce. “Global business now moves at internet speed, but money hasn’t always kept pace,” she said.
The US payments giant explained the service will initially focus on remittances and payouts, with broader commercial use cases expected to follow as the corridor develops.
China opens the door but keeps hold of the keys
China has exhibited a willingness to open up to the outside world, with the UK recently announcing visa free travel for British citizens visiting China for short stays. However, when it comes to payments infrastructure China’s openness has limits.
For years, global payments companies have struggled to gain access to the mainland market, which remains tightly regulated and dominated by domestic networks. Even international card schemes which operate in China often do so through joint ventures or limited use cases.
Visa’s new partnership follows this trend, as the company is not entering China’s payments market directly. The US-based firm is gaining access through a narrowly defined, inbound only corridor which runs entirely on UnionPay International’s rails.
Under the agreement, Visa Direct acts as the front door for global clients, offering a single technical integration to reach Chinese recipients. Once inside the corridor, however, payments are processed through UnionPay’s MoneyExpress platform, which handles settlement and local delivery.
What Visa gains is reach and scale because the deal provides coverage to more than 95% of UnionPay debit cardholders in mainland China, opening a corridor into one of the world’s largest remittance destinations.
Therefore, the agreement is commercially significant because it gives platforms, marketplaces and employers operating across borders a way into China, removing one of the most frustrating friction points in global payouts.
As Platonova put it, the expansion is about delivering infrastructure “at massive scale, speed and reliability” in markets where access has historically been limited.
Digitisation meets digital red lines
UnionPay International CEO Larry Wang described the deal as an “active response to the digitisation and convenience trends” influencing global remittances, highlighting a demand for faster, cheaper and more transparent money movement.
However, while Visa and UnionPay are aligned on digitising payments infrastructure, there is one area where their strategies sharply really don’t align.
Visa has increasingly put stablecoins on a pedestal as a key part of the future payments stack, particularly for cross-border settlement and payouts. Executives have highlighted growing stablecoin volumes on Visa’s network.
Last week on Visa’s latest earnings call, CEO Ryan McInerney said his company’s goal is to “build the secure and seamless interoperable layer between stablecoins and traditional fiat payments at scale across the world.”
The firm has even started piloting stablecoin payouts through Visa Direct, allowing platforms and businesses to send funds directly to users’ wallets. However, this won’t be launching in China anytime soon.
In December 2025, the People’s Bank of China classified stablecoins as virtual currencies and warned they pose risks related to money laundering, fraud and illegal cross-border capital flows.
Unlike some regulators which see stablecoins as potentially regulatable payment instruments, Chinese authorities have placed them in the prohibited category alongside other cryptoassets.
