Hong Kong's FPS to Link With UnionPay International by End-2026, Opening QR Payments at 100 Million Merchants

The HKMA said on 2 November that Hong Kong's Faster Payment System will connect to UnionPay International by the end of 2026, letting users of FPS-enabled bank and wallet apps scan QR codes at more than 100 million merchants in Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and over 40 other markets; fees, exchange rates and participating institutions have not been announced.

Hong Kong's FPS to Link With UnionPay International by End-2026, Opening QR Payments at 100 Million Merchants — editorial cover artwork
Hong Kong's FPS to Link With UnionPay International by End-2026, Opening QR Payments at 100 Million Merchants — editorial cover artwork

By Daniel Osei, Journalist, Payments and Cards

Hong Kong's Faster Payment System (FPS) will be linked to UnionPay International by the end of 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said on 2 November 2026 at Hong Kong FinTech Week. Once live, people using FPS-enabled banking and e-wallet apps will be able to pay by scanning QR codes at more than 100 million merchants in UnionPay's network and its partner networks, in Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and more than 40 overseas markets.

The link is announced, not live. The HKMA describes the rollout as progressive, and has not published fees, exchange rates, transaction limits or the list of participating banks and wallets.

What the HKMA committed to

The HKMA's FinTech Week release lists the UnionPay link as one of four new initiatives, under "expanding cross-border payment connectivity", next to the 24/7 upgrade of Project Ensemble. It gives three facts: the link will happen by the end of this year, it will be enabled progressively, and it will cover QR payments at UnionPay and partner merchants for "retail payments both locally and while travelling".

Further detail so far comes from interviews reported by Hong Kong media and collected by China Fintech. According to TVB News, the first phase is planned to cover Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, Macao, Malaysia and South Korea, with the order of later markets to be announced in the coming months. HKMA deputy chief executive Arthur Yuen told TVB that exchange rates and fees had not been set, that people would use the service only if the rate is attractive, and that the HKMA is pressing UnionPay for the best terms. TVB put the number of registered FPS users at more than 22 million.

How it changes outbound QR payments

Today, a Hong Kong resident paying at a QR merchant across the border typically uses a cross-border wallet such as AlipayHK or WeChat Pay HK, or a UnionPay card. The FPS link would let the same payment be made from an existing bank or stored-value app that already supports FPS, with UnionPay providing the acceptance network on the other side.

That shifts the competition. Banks that already offer FPS in their apps would get a route into outbound travel spending that wallet operators handle now, without issuing a new card or building their own merchant network. UnionPay, in turn, would gain a new funding source into its QR acceptance network from Hong Kong's main account-to-account system.

The commercial question is price. Neither the HKMA nor UnionPay has said how currency conversion will be priced or who pays the merchant-side fees, and Arthur Yuen's comment makes clear the HKMA sees the exchange rate as the deciding factor for take-up.

Hong Kong's existing FPS links

This is not FPS's first cross-border connection. China Fintech notes that FPS has linked with Thailand's PromptPay for QR payments since December 2023, and with the mainland for remittances through Payment Connect since June 2025. The UnionPay link differs in scale: it plugs FPS into a card-network-run QR acceptance footprint across dozens of markets, rather than into one other country's fast payment system.

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