The reporter learned from the People's Bank of China on April 18 that the People's Bank of China continues to promote the interconnection of QR code payments in China and Cambodia and has made positive progress. In the first quarter of this year, UnionPay Cloud Flash Payment and domestic UnionPay cooperation wallets continued to increase in QR code transactions in Cambodia, with the number of transactions increasing by more than 1 times year-on-year and the amount increasing by more than 2 times.
According to reports, under the guidance of the People's Bank of China and the State Bank of Cambodia, China UnionPay International, a subsidiary of China UnionPay, continues to deepen the construction of China-Cambodia cross-border payment network and realizes the two-way implementation of cross-border QR code payment interconnection in Southeast Asia. In December 2023, the Cambodian QR Code Standard (KHQR) supports the acceptance of more than 200 UnionPay domestic and foreign cooperation wallets, including Cloud Flash Payment, APPs of major domestic and major commercial banks. In March 2025, the wallet products of Cambodia's payment system Bakong can be paid on UnionPay's global QR code acceptance network and WeChat merchants in China.
The reporter learned that UnionPay entered the Cambodian market in 2008 and has now built a payment service system with extensive network coverage and diversified products in the local area. Almost all local merchants' POS terminals and 80% of ATMs support UnionPay card consumption and withdrawals. The mainstream Cambodian banks have issued hundreds of thousands of UnionPay cards in total.
A person from UnionPay International introduced that at present, UnionPay has reached and promoted cross-border QR code interconnection cooperation with local networks in 19 overseas countries and regions, and has driven the number of overseas UnionPay QR code acceptance merchants to exceed 10 million. In the future, UnionPay will continue to cooperate with local institutions to optimize payment experience and expand the number of merchants and users of two-way interconnection projects. (Reporters Wu Yu and Ren Jun)
