Tencent and Visa expand partnership for AI-powered payments

By Divya Shah

Why it matters: The partnership highlights how AI is reshaping payments, combining cross-border commerce with agentic transactions that could automate purchasing while maintaining security and consumer control.

Tencent and Visa have expanded their partnership beyond cross-border payments, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance payment connectivity and explore emerging AI-powered commerce use cases. 

 The agreement aims to improve payment experiences for travellers entering and leaving China while enabling greater connectivity between the companies’ payment ecosystems. 

As part of the collaboration, Tencent and Visa plan to develop solutions that allow travellers to make payments at participating merchants across the Weixin Pay and Visa networks through Tencent’s TenPay Global platform and Visa Pay. The initiative is intended to provide consumers with more seamless payment experiences when travelling internationally. 

 The companies also plan to expand cooperation through Visa Direct, allowing more overseas users to transfer funds into the Weixin Pay ecosystem and improving cross-border money movement capabilities. 

 “As two-way travel and commerce between China and the rest of the world continue to grow, we are pleased to build on our existing partnership with Visa to deepen cross-border payment connectivity and explore new possibilities in AI-powered agentic payments,” said Forest Lin, Corporate Vice President of Tencent and Head of Tencent Financial Technology.  

Beyond traditional payments, the companies will explore the role of artificial intelligence in commerce. Tencent and Visa will examine how Visa Intelligent Commerce can enable AI agents to discover products, select items and complete purchases on behalf of users while maintaining security and consumer control.  

The partners will also assess payment capabilities for developer agents and other emerging AI-commerce models as businesses increasingly look to automate purchasing and financial processes.  

The latest agreement builds on Visa’s existing collaboration with Tencent’s international payment platform Midas, which currently supports gaming payments and risk management services. The companies said they plan to extend that relationship to Tencent’s overseas AI-focused businesses. 

 “Our partnership with Tencent gives us an opportunity to help connect those experiences to Visa’s global network, opening more ways for consumers to pay and businesses to participate in global commerce, with trust and consumer control at the heart of how we innovate,” said Elaine Chang, Group General Manager, Greater China, Visa. 

The proposed initiatives remain subject to applicable regulatory, data governance and security requirements.