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Tencent’s Lin: “Demand for cross-border payments and remittance increased during the pandemic”

Forest Lin, corporate vice president at Tencent and concurrently president at Tencent Financial Technology, shares his insights on the impacts of the pandemic on the company, the recent strategic initiatives as well as the outlook for 2021

January 11, 2021 | Neeti Aggarwal
  • Mobile payment volumes dropped in the first quarter of 2020 due to the pandemic
  • The demand for cross-border payments, remittance and wealth management services surged in 2020
  • Cross-border trade and consumption will be key drivers of global growth to achieve a sustainable recovery from the impacts of COVID-19

Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent operates across multiple verticals in internet services including social networking, e-commerce, online games, fintech, business services and technology solutions. Its communication and social platforms, QQ and WeChat (Weixin in China), have 617 million and 1.2 billion users, respectively. Lin oversees the company’s fintech business that includes payment, wealth management, securities and other services.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digitisation and brought a rapid shift from offline to online purchases. The cross-border travel and activities were restricted resulting in unique challenges and opportunities for businesses. Lin said the mobile payment volumes from offline activities dropped in the first quarter of 2020 but increased after showing signs of recovery. Meanwhile the cross-border remittance and commercial payments have grown rapidly during the pandemic.

“The need for remittance services from Hong Kong to the Philippines and Indonesia via WeChat Pay HK has been constantly increasing,” Lin said.

Tencent introduced a new platform, WiseFX, to provide enhanced cross-border payment and foreign currency services to corporates.

Lin explains that the increase in commercial payment and wealth management contributed to the growth of fintech services last year. In the quarter ending September 2020 Tencent earned revenue of RMB125.4 billion ($18.4 billion) an increase of 29% year-on-year (YoY), while the revenue from fintech business services increased by 24%....

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Keywords:Financial Technology, Remittance, Covid-19