China is known for keeping its payments system closed, so why is it suddenly involved in cross‑border partnerships with foreign networks?
China has caught the industry’s attention with a run of unexpected payment deals involving OwlTing, Visa, UnionPay and mBridge.
Access to the mainland market has been tightly controlled for decades, with domestic networks such as UnionPay, Alipay and WeChat Pay accounting for most consumer and merchant payment activity.
Some foreign firms have entered through joint ventures or tightly defined inbound‑only corridors, though these cases are limited. Even China’s alternative to Swift, the Cross‑Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), is not an open global network.
For years, China has preferred to build its own rails, set its own standards and restrict foreign participation. However, recent activity suggests it could be changing this strategy.
In the space of a few months, China has been linked to several initiatives, including a new partnership between OwlTing and Credible Finance, Visa’s corridor with UnionPay International and the development of mBridge, a multi‑CBDC settlement platform involving several central banks.
Three moves in a matter of months
The most recent development came today, with OwlTing Group’s partnership with US fintech Credible Finance. The agreement links OwlPay Harbor, OwlTing’s licensed cross‑border settlement infrastructure, with Credible’s open payments stack, which reaches more than 40 markets.
Under the agreement, Credible will use OwlPay Harbor to settle payouts into China, giving its clients a regulated path into a market that has been difficult to access. In return, OwlTing plans to use Credible’s network to open a corridor into India, one of the world’s largest payment‑receiving economies.
In February, Visa partnered with UnionPay International to allow businesses and consumers to send money directly into mainland China through Visa Direct. The corridor links Visa Direct with UnionPay’s MoneyExpress platform, enabling remittances and business payouts to reach more than 95% of UnionPay debit cardholders.
Vira Platonova, Global Head of Visa Direct, said the expansion is about delivering infrastructure “at massive scale, speed and reliability” in markets where access has historically been limited.
The service is inbound‑only and runs on UnionPay’s rails, suggesting China is not ready to be completely open just yet and still prefers controlled access. Despite this, commercially, it gives global platforms a way into one of the world’s largest remittance destinations.
The third development is mBridge, a multi‑CBDC platform involving the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The project aims to enable real‑time FX settlement between central banks using their own digital currencies.
While the platform has caught geopolitical attention, its ambition is to create a shared infrastructure for cross‑border settlement that reduces reliance on intermediary currencies and speeds up liquidity cycles for exporters.
Why does China look to be opening up?
The progress of mBridge suggests China is strengthening financial links with regional partners and exploring settlement models that reduce reliance on the dollar. The platform’s design, connecting the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, aligns with Beijing’s efforts to build deeper economic ties across Asia and the Middle East.
However, this reason does not explain why China is also signing agreements with US‑based firms. The Visa–UnionPay corridor announced in February, and the OwlTing–Credible partnership announced today, both involve American companies gaining access to the mainland market, even if the corridors are tightly controlled and operate on Chinese rails.
The OwlTing announcement follows President Donald Trump’s state visit to Beijing in May, a moment which placed China–US economic relations under the spotlight after months of disagreements on conflict in the Middle East and trade sanctions.
Whether the proximity is meaningful or coincidental is unclear at this moment in time, but it has become part of the wider picture surrounding China’s recent moves.
