On September 12, 2025, China UnionPay and Visa jointly witnessed the release of the report "High-Quality Development of Card Organizations Driving Payment Industry to Serve the Real Economy" in Wuhan. The report, spearheaded by the Fintech 50 Forum, systematically reviews global and Chinese payment industry development trends, provides in-depth analysis of card organizations' vital roles in serving the real economy and their digital transformation and ecosystem collaboration mechanisms, and proposes a series of future-oriented development pathways and policy recommendations. During the writing process, the report extensively incorporated perspectives from various stakeholders including card organizations, commercial banks, non-bank payment institutions, and service providers across industry, academia, and research sectors, combining both professional expertise and practical reference value.
**Global Payment Industry Structural Transformation Accelerates, Technology Drives Experience Upgrades**
The report indicates that as the global economic and trade landscape enters a new evolutionary phase, the global payment industry is undergoing profound transformation. Payment systems exhibit parallel trends of "regionalization" and "infrastructuralization," with real-time payment systems and regional interconnectivity accelerating. Technologies including artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and biometric recognition are rapidly being applied, fundamentally reshaping payment processes and user experiences. The report showcases innovative cases such as China UnionPay's AI intelligent payment services based on MCP protocol, "IoT + seamless payment" solutions creating secure seamless charging experiences for new energy vehicles, and Visa's AI-powered payment risk control and intelligent commerce enablement, as well as Visa's collaboration with Tencent on palm payment, demonstrating technology's revolutionary enhancement of payment security, convenience, and seamless experiences.
The report proposes that at the regulatory level, global focus centers on "regulatory consistency" and "penetrative supervision," seeking dynamic balance among fair competition, risk prevention, and innovation incentives. Meanwhile, new business models such as account-to-account (A2A) payments, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), and cryptocurrency wallet payments are rapidly developing, reflecting the market's continuous pursuit of efficient and diversified payment tools.
**China's Payment Industry Forms New Multi-element Integration Landscape, Card Organizations Actively Promote Ecosystem Collaboration**
The report fully acknowledges achievements in China's payment industry, recognizing the gradual formation of an ecosystem characterized by "globally leading scale, deep technology penetration, and multi-element symbiotic structure," with the following features: First, parallel issuance of physical and digital cards has become mainstream, with digital wallets becoming core payment tools for card binding due to their convenience. Second, diverse payment methods including card swiping, QR codes, contactless (NFC, HCE), palm or facial recognition achieve multi-scenario coverage, particularly popular in high-frequency small-amount transaction scenarios such as retail and transportation. The report specifically mentions the effectiveness of China UnionPay's "Jinxiu Action" in improving foreign-related payment environments, as well as the practice of China UnionPay collaborating with Visa and other international card organizations to support foreign card tap-to-pass services on Beijing and other cities' subway systems. Third, multi-element market participants including commercial banks, card organizations, non-bank payment institutions, and service providers develop collaboratively. Card organizations actively build cooperation platforms, promote industry standardization and normalization, while enhancing industry operational efficiency through supporting interconnectivity, optimizing clearing processes, and reducing clearing costs. Fourth, the payment clearing market further deepens open cooperation. Card organizations continuously expand cooperation breadth and depth, strengthening collaboration in product innovation, scenario co-construction, and joint risk prevention and control. In 2025, China UnionPay and Visa jointly promoted upgrade cooperation with commercial banks to transition dual-standard bank cards from magnetic stripe to chip cards, enhancing card transaction experiences. Both parties co-built the "Beijing Central Axis Barrier-free Payment Service Tourism Demonstration Zone," jointly supporting inbound payment facilitation and promoting Sino-foreign cultural exchanges.
**China UnionPay: Exploring Industrial Development Path with Chinese Characteristics**
The report summarizes card organizations' characteristic development practices in the Chinese market. The report indicates that China UnionPay, focusing on global payment industry transformation innovation trends and new digital transformation developments, continues to play its role as financial infrastructure, promoting integration of multi-party industry resources and providing core support for full-chain innovation in the payment industry. On one hand, China UnionPay serves China's high-quality economic development, designing differentiated and characteristic payment services around home appliance "trade-in" programs and cultural tourism travel, precisely supporting government "consumption promotion" initiatives, exploring innovative pathways to serve the financial "five major articles," and promoting consumption potential release and economic development. On the other hand, China UnionPay focuses on healthy industry development, combining market demand to deepen application of new technologies including artificial intelligence, privacy computing, and IoT in the payment industry, promoting global payment ecosystem construction through multi-lateral mutual recognition and compatibility of standards and rules, and cross-border payment interconnectivity, constructing multi-dimensional patterns of open resource sharing, leading payment industry digitalization and intelligentization development to new heights.
**Visa: Co-building Open and Forward-looking Payment Ecosystem**
The report summarizes card organizations' transformation pathways in global payment industry changes. The report indicates that Visa is transitioning from traditional four-party model clearing networks toward open ecosystem positioning, extending value boundaries from transaction processing to capability output, strategically connecting multiple payment rails, and promoting full-chain reconstruction of payments and capital flows. Visa's bank card business continues to demonstrate vitality, evolving into a multi-engine framework of "consumer payments + commercial payments and capital flows + value-added services." In this process, Visa not only becomes an important connector in diverse payment ecosystems through integrating technology protocols, promoting standard output and scenario integration, but also accelerates transformation toward "X-as-a-Service" (XaaS) models centered on capability openness. Visa modularizes core capabilities including payments, risk control, and compliance, outputting to partners through technical tools such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Software Development Kits (SDKs), with its role evolving from infrastructure operator to capability enabler.
The report emphasizes that in China's payment industry's journey toward high-quality development, bank cards and card organizations continue to demonstrate irreplaceable core value. They not only drive continuous payment experience upgrades but also construct secure, reliable, globally compatible, and open interconnected industry mechanisms, effectively promoting global payment system interconnectivity, driving construction of symbiotic, win-win, mutually prosperous payment ecosystems, and achieving positive interaction between policy guidance and market innovation. As policy implementation promoters, standard-setting leaders, and ecosystem co-creation facilitators, card organizations provide solid guarantees for the payment industry's long-term healthy development.
The release of this report reflects industry, academia, and research sectors' thinking on industry development and provides reference for the payment industry serving the real economy. In the future, card organizations will continue to deepen payment innovation, ecosystem co-construction, and global cooperation, working with all industry parties to promote China's payment system innovation through openness and development through collaboration, supporting deep integration of digital and real economies.