UnionPay says its payment acceptance network now spans all ten ASEAN countries and covers more than 38 million QR merchants in the region, as the company expands cross-border payment links between China and Southeast Asian markets.
The company disclosed the figures during the 23rd China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, China. UnionPay also said contactless acceptance at point-of-sale terminals and ATMs, as well as local card issuance, is available across multiple ASEAN markets.
The update builds on a series of bilateral QR payment connections in the region. TNGlobal reported last year that UnionPay International and Vietnam’s NAPAS launched a China-Vietnam cross-border QR payment pilot designed to support two-way wallet acceptance.
Indonesia link went live in June
UnionPay said a China-Indonesia QR payment linkage went live in June 2026. Following that connection, the company said its overseas QR acceptance footprint has grown to more than 46 million merchants.
Work with Vietnam is also continuing. UnionPay said standards harmonization allows Chinese consumers to use participating wallets at merchants in Vietnam, while the partners are working toward enabling Vietnam-based wallets to be accepted in China.
Cross-border QR interoperability has become a major regional payments theme because it can allow consumers to use familiar domestic banking or wallet apps abroad without relying solely on international card rails. Central banks and payment-network operators across Southeast Asia have been building bilateral and multilateral connections around national QR standards.
UnionPay adds AI payment demonstrations
At the expo, UnionPay also demonstrated its Agentic Payment Open Protocol (APOP), showing payment workflows connected to smart glasses and in-vehicle systems. The company describes the framework as a way to connect AI-driven services with payment authorization across different use cases.
Agentic payment systems will require careful controls around user intent, authentication and transaction limits because software agents can initiate actions without the same interaction flow as a conventional checkout screen. UnionPay did not provide independent performance data for APOP in the announcement.
The company also said an out-of-band enhanced authentication deployment reduced the overall fraud rate at participating pilot banks by 90 percent compared with pre-deployment levels. That figure is a UnionPay-reported result and was not independently verified.
UnionPay is also promoting cross-border business-to-business payment services and its Nihao China app, which allows overseas users to register with international phone numbers or email addresses and pay through supported Chinese QR systems without linking a Chinese bank card.