On April 27, 2023, Huarui Fintech Salon (No.8): Current Situation and Prospects of Cross-border Mobile Payments in China was successfully held online, co-organized by Shanghai Huarui Bank, the International Monetary Institute (IMI) of Renmin University of China, and FinTech Institute of RUC, with the cooperation of the China Banking Research Center of RUC. Wang Zuogang, General Manager of the Cross-border Business Department at Ant Group, gave a keynote speech. Fang Xin, President of PBoC Haikou Central Sub-Branch, Dong Yun, Deputy Director of Fintech Research Center at Finance Institute, CASS, and Cheng Hua, Associate Professor, Executive Director of Digital Economy Research Center at RUC, participated in the seminar. The event was hosted by Wang Fang, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Finance, RUC, and Deputy Director of IMI.

Wang Zuogang introduced China's cross-border mobile payment from the perspective of cross-border business of payment institutions. He pointed out that the current cross-border business of payment institutions can be roughly divided into four aspects: inflow, outflow, type B (enterprises) and type C (consumers). Also, he stated that China's mobile payment has effectively solved the problems of cross-border payment: high price, delayed payment and narrow coverage. In recent years, the cross-border payment business of payment institutions has grown steadily and rapidly. However, compared to the domestic mobile payment market, there is still more room for growth in cross-border payment business. Facing international competition, Chinese payment institutions and fintech companies are under tremendous pressure. In recent years, U.S. Internet technology companies have involved themselves in this field and their core technology capabilities and the degree of internationalization are substantially ahead of Chinese counterparts.

In addition, he discussed three issues. First, China's cross-border e-commerce and RMB-denominated settlement. Digital payment fosters the development of China's cross-border e-commerce. In fact, the latter facilitates RMB-denominated settlement and the solid foundation laid by more than ten years of RMB internationalization also guarantees the rapid development of China's cross-border e-commerce and the going out of payment institutions. The three aspects are an organism. Second, digital currency and cross-border payment. International experiments with digital currencies for cross-border payments have begun. However, compared to traditional electronic currency, the exact advantages of digital currency need to be further explored. The use of digital currencies for cross-border payments can be discussed from the perspectives of domestic and international influences, sovereign credit and commercial credit, currency issuance and payment networks. Third, the QR Code standard for mobile payment. Accompanied with the rapid development of China's mobile payment, the URL code standard has been upgraded and optimized according to merchants' needs for digital business, and finally summarized as fine industrial practice, which is not only the de facto technical standard commonly adopted by major domestic Internet companies, but also radiates overseas countries and regions along with China's mobile payment going abroad.

Translated by Feng Wenyi