Dive Brief:

• Xoom, PayPal Holdings’ digital remittance subsidiary, has partnered with Tencent to facilitate cross-border payments for Weixin Pay users, according to a press release.
• As part of the partnership, Weixin Pay users can receive funds in their Weixin Pay wallets or bank accounts connected to Weixin Pay via Xoom or PayPal within a few minutes, the Wednesday release said. Tenpay Global, Tencent’s cross-border payment platform, is a sister service of Weixin Pay, Tencent’s popular Chinese payments platform, per the company’s website.
• The service is available to Xoom and PayPal users in the U.S., Canada and Europe via Xoom and PayPal’s websites and mobile apps. The companies plan to expand the service to more countries in the future, per the announcement.

Dive Insight:

With its newest partnership with Tencent, PayPal continues to use Xoom to boost its payments business. In 2019, Xoom teamed up with Walmart and Ria to let consumers send funds available for pickup at Walmart and Ria locations in the U.S. Xoom also collaborated with Visa in 2023 to let its customers transfer funds to Visa debit cards in 25 countries. 

The collaboration opens another pathway for consumers to remit funds to consumers in China. A PayPal spokesperson confirmed to Payments Dive that Xoom has previously facilitated payments to AliPay users in China and noted that the company purchased GoPay in China in 2019. 

“Xoom has long been known as a fast, easy, inexpensive way to send money to friends and family across borders – and now, being able to send funds to Weixin Pay users from the U.S., Canada and Europe, we’re continuing to connect users wherever they might be and for what they might need funds for,” Paul Bances, vice president of market development for Xoom, said in a statement.

Although PayPal has leveraged Xoom’s remittance services in its partnerships since purchasing the business for about $890 million in 2015, the company reportedly weighed whether to sell the company at one point, The Information reported in 2023. That media outlet reported PayPal considered selling the company and hired Goldman Sachs to work on the sales process. The company didn’t comment at that time.

Since taking the company’s top post in 2023, PayPal CEO Alex Chriss last year had considered divesting some units after numerous acquisitions in prior years, saying there were some that were “a drag to the business.”