(May 15): US President Donald Trump said he had raised the issue of granting Visa Inc wider access to offer payments services to Chinese consumers and businesses during a meeting with Xi Jinping on Thursday in Beijing.
“I said, ‘What about letting Visa?’” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “We had the head of Visa there today, by the way. Visa is a big deal. I said, what about using Visa in China? For some reason, they were blackballed, and maybe that will come off.”
Visa chief executive officer Ryan McInerney was among a group of approximately 30 US corporate executives that joined Trump’s delegation for the state visit to China. Trump said he disrupted the planned agenda for the summit by inviting the corporate leaders to offer presentations on their Chinese business, and that he pressed Xi to improve market access.
US payment networks’ battle for entry into mainland China’s massive payments market has long been a point of contention in the trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies. China in June 2015 allowed foreign bank-card clearing providers to obtain licenses by setting up units or acquiring a local company, ending a monopoly by state-run China UnionPay Co.
Mastercard in 2023 became the first foreign payments network to receive approval to clear domestic yuan-denominated bank-card transactions in China through a joint venture with local partner NetsUnion, and American Express has struck a deal to start a bank-card clearing business with a Chinese partner. Visa has yet to receive a licence to operate in the country.
China had 10.2 billion bank cards in circulation at the end of 2025, with transaction value totaling CNY963.6 trillion (US$142.0 trillion or $181.6 trillion) last year, according to the People’s Bank of China.
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