Visa Gets Beijing's Nod to Clear Cards in China Six Years After Applying, Weeks Before Trump and Xi Meet Again

Visa has finally gotten a foot in the door of China's domestic card market, more than six years after it knocked. The People's Bank of China approved Visa's Application to Prepare, the company said Tuesday, letting it begin formal work on a domestic bank card clearing business. Visa filed with the central bank in May 2020.

The timing has politics written all over it. The approval lands weeks before the APEC Leaders' Meeting in Shenzhen, where Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are expected to meet again.

A deal with Washington's fingerprints

Visa CEO Ryan McInerney has spent the year close to the US-China relationship. He joined Trump's business delegation to Beijing in May, became chair of the US-China Business Council in June and led a trip to Beijing in early September. After the May visit, Trump told Fox News he had raised Visa's request for market access. Following Xi's state visit to Washington in September, China said it would approve applications from foreign financial institutions to operate in the country.

McInerney's statement thanked both governments. "We greatly appreciate the important role of the leaders of the United States and China in pursuing a constructive and strategically stable relationship between the world's largest economies," he said, calling the approval "a significant step forward in Visa's long-standing commitment to China."

George Chen of The Asia Group was blunter. "The timing is notable," he said. "The move suggests that Beijing is keen to demonstrate tangible progress for American businesses before Trump's next visit to China."

Permission to prepare, not to operate

The approval is narrower than it sounds. Visa now has one year to finish preparatory work before it can apply to start operations. "The approval allows Visa to move forward with the regulatory process, but does not permit it to begin operation," said KBW analyst Sanjay Sakhrani.

Today Visa works in China through dual-branded cards issued with Chinese banks. UnionPay processes those transactions inside the country, and Visa handles them abroad. In January Visa said mainland-issued cards could be linked to Apple Pay for use overseas.

Rivals got there first

Visa is late. American Express won the central bank's nod in 2018 and its processing license in June 2020. Mastercard's joint venture got preparation approval in February 2020 and started processing in 2024.

Both rivals operate through joint ventures. Visa wants a wholly owned clearing business that would process domestic yuan transactions directly. TD Cowen's Bryan Bergin says that would give Visa "greater control over technology, operations, economics, and product development" if it eventually gets a full license.

Getting a license is only the start. "Building merchant acceptance, issuer relationships, and domestic transaction scale will likely take years even after receiving a license," Bergin said. Everyday payments in China run through Alipay and WeChat Pay, UnionPay dominates domestic cards, and Beijing has long favored local players while restricting cross-border capital flows.

Sakhrani framed the real test. "The bigger question is whether China ultimately permits international card networks to achieve meaningful scale in a market that has historically been difficult for foreign providers to penetrate," he said.

China is one of several long bets for Visa, which is also pushing into stablecoin settlement, now at a $20 billion annualized run rate. The China one just got its first real green light, six years after Visa first asked.

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