China clears Visa to handle domestic yuan card payments
Why it matters: The approval lets Visa build a local clearing network after years of delay, loosening UnionPay's grip on the market.
China's central bank approved Visa to set up a locally registered bank-card clearing organization, opening the way for the US payments company to process domestic yuan transactions on its own network. The People's Bank of China said Visa has one year to complete business preparations. Domestic card clearing in China has long been dominated by state-backed UnionPay, while foreign providers were largely limited to foreign-currency payments on multicurrency cards. American Express won a clearing license for a joint venture in 2020, followed by Mastercard in 2023. The move came weeks after Xi Jinping visited the United States and the two sides reached what China's Commerce Ministry called a consensus in principle on financial services.