Tencent’s WeChat Pay, one of China’s major mobile payment services, announced that international credit cards can now be linked to the mobile payment platform. Expats living in China and travelers can now bind and activate WeChat Pay accounts with credit card services provided by MasterCard, Visa, and JCB. This is the first time users are able to use WeChat Pay without having a Chinese bank account or credit card, the Technote website reports.

As China is going cashless, WeChat Pay, Alipay, and UnionPay all offer mobile payment solutions, allowing for payment in stores and restaurants using a mobile phone and a QR code. Chinese consumers are also increasingly using mobile payments for online shopping, ride-hailing, ticket purchasing, bike renting, food delivery, and hotel booking.

Released in August 2013, WeChat Pay has expanded to 25 countries, serving the large number of Chinese tourists traveling abroad. WeChat Pay is also popular among expats living in China. According to Tencent, over 64% of expats in China are using WeChat Pay. In order the replenish the mobile wallet with funds, it had to be linked to a Chinese bank account, but now linking with a foreign credit card has become possible, making the process much easier.

WeChat Pay will become available in Italy for the first time after the payment service clinched an agreement with Docomo Digital to offer the service to the country’s retailers, allowing customers to use WeChat Pay for payments. The digital marketing company Digital Retex will help partnered retailers host an official WeChat account that will be used to promote their goods and services. Digital Retex maintains the official WeChat accounts of more than 70 European brands, including Valentino and Ermenegildo Zegna. WeChat Pay is already available in the UK and also in France through a partnership with BNP Paribas. WeChat has 980 million active users per month. In 2017, WeChat Pay was used by Chinese consumers at an average rate of 1 million transactions per minute.

Meanwhile Huawei Technologies and China UnionPay have formed a partnership to launch a mobile payment service in Russia and later in other markets along the “Belt and Road Initiative”. Huawei Pay uses biometrics and near-field communication technology to enable in-store payments through Huawei phones. In Russia, UnionPay has 400,000 point-of-sale terminals that can accept the Quickpass payment modes including Huawei Pay. China processed 11 times more mobile payments than the U.S. last year, according to consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.

According to Zion Market Research, the global mobile wallet market was valued at USD594 billion in 2016 and is expected to hit USD3.14 trillion by 2022, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 32%.