Tencent has always had a footprint in domestic payments through WeChat Pay, but whether or not it … [+]
Like its rival Alibaba, Tencent has developed a large portfolio of overseas fintech investments. Some of these are strategic bets on rising Big Tech companies with fintech arms, like Voyager Innovations in the Philippines and Sea Group in Singapore, which Tencent believes will eventually be dominant players. Other investments are more focused on facilitating access to the mainland China market for fintechs that have a niche there, such as Australia-founded but Hong Kong-headquartered Airwallex.
While Alibaba’s Ant Group has been quietly trying to build its own cross-border payments ecosystem outside of China, Tencent has not had a comparable overarching objective with its overseas fintech investments. This can be partly explained by Tencent’s fintech prowess deriving from the WeChat super app, which is not widely used outside mainland China and…