TenPay Global and Mastercard sign MOU to explore QR interoperability and agentic payments

TenPay Global, Tencent’s cross-border payment platform, and Mastercard signed a memorandum of understanding to explore cross-border payment interoperability and agentic payments, the companies announced in Hong Kong on November 2, 2026, during Hong Kong FinTech Week. The memorandum is an agreement to explore these areas.

The first area is QR payment acceptance for international visitors to the Chinese mainland, who would pay at QR-enabled merchants with the digital wallets and bank apps they already use. TenPay Global and Mastercard said they will combine capabilities in payment processing, currency conversion, risk management and fraud prevention, and will approach digital-wallet providers, financial institutions and payment-service providers to widen participation.

The companies said inbound spending in the Chinese mainland grew 51.3 % year over year in the 12 months to June 2026, according to Mastercard data. Transactions made with international digital wallets through Weixin Pay in the mainland grew 81.8 % in number and 80.6 % in value year over year from January to August 2026, they said.

The second area deepens existing remittance collaboration through Mastercard Move, which the companies said supports transfers across more than 200 countries and territories and more than 150 currencies.

The third covers agentic commerce: how interoperability, trust and security extend to AI agents that help consumers and businesses discover, decide and transact. The companies named Mastercard Agent Pay, Mastercard Agent Connect and Virtual C-Suite as products they will explore.

On Mastercard’s October 29, 2026 earnings call, CEO Michael Miebach said a broad strategic partnership with OpenAI includes use of Agent Pay, Mastercard’s payments infrastructure for agentic commerce, which Shopify’s Shop Pay already uses, PYMNTS reported.