Get a payment license in China.

A payment business licence from the People's Bank of China under Article 6 of State Council Decree No. 768. The holder is a Chinese company whose name contains 支付, and the licence itself records the business types it may carry on and the geographic scope. Trading without one is punished under Article 47 by confiscation plus one to five times the illegal gains, or RMB 500,000 to 2,000,000 where those gains are under RMB 500,000.

Yes, on the published rules. Non-bank payment services are not on the 2024 foreign investment negative list, which runs to 29 items across 11 sector headings and does not use the words 支付 or 支付机构 anywhere, and PBOC Announcement [2018] No. 7 applies the same entry standards to foreign and domestic applicants. The conditions are that the investor incorporates a foreign-invested enterprise in China and keeps its systems, disaster recovery and the personal and financial data collected here onshore. No foreign-ownership cap appears in the Decree, the Rules or the list.

Its own registers show no sign of it. There are 157 licensed institutions and 114 cancelled ones, first-licence dates cluster in the 2011-2015 batches, and the cumulative change list to August 2026 holds 79 decisions, every one of them a name, capital, shareholder or controller change, a merger, a division or a refusal. We could not find a live PBOC statement saying new institutions will not be approved and we do not claim one; this conclusion is read off the registers themselves.

By buying a licensee and having the People's Bank approve the change of major shareholder or actual controller under Article 13(3) of the Decree, on a three-month clock. Two foreign buyers appear in the bank's own change list: 贝宝支付（北京）, PayPal's Chinese licensee, in decision 银许准予决字〔2023〕第5号, and 易联支付, whose actual controller became 派安盈全球有限公司, Payoneer Global Inc., in 银许准予决字〔2024〕第191号. Rules Article 25 adds that the outgoing holder must have held for three years and the incoming one must carry no material violation record and a sustainable earnings base.

储值账户运营, stored-value account operation, and 支付交易处理, payment transaction processing, split by whether the institution receives the payer's prepaid funds under Article 15. Article 55 of the Rules divides each into Ⅰ类 and Ⅱ类 and converts the old licences: internet payment to 储值账户运营Ⅰ类, prepaid card issuance and acceptance to 储值账户运营Ⅱ类 with its geographic scope untouched, bank card acquiring to 支付交易处理Ⅰ类, and telephone or digital-television payment without internet payment to 支付交易处理Ⅱ类. Single-purpose prepaid cards fall outside the Decree.

RMB 100,000,000 of registered capital, fully paid in cash, under Article 8 of the Decree. Article 8 of the Rules adds up to another RMB 100 million by category and geography: a flat RMB 100 million for 储值账户运营Ⅰ类, and RMB 5 million per province beyond the home province for 储值账户运营Ⅱ类 and 支付交易处理Ⅰ类, capped at RMB 100 million above twenty provinces. Article 59 of the Rules then sets minimum net assets against the average daily client float on a sliding scale from 5% down to 1%.

Six months from acceptance for a new institution, under Article 10 of the Decree and Article 18 of the Rules. Three months for a change of major shareholder or actual controller, a merger or division, a cross-province move or a change of business type or geographic scope, and one month for a name or registered-capital change, under Article 45 of the Rules. The application is posted on the branch website for twenty days under Article 19, and verification time does not count against the clock. On an acquisition, plan on twelve to eighteen months end to end.

Reserve funds go in full and directly to the People's Bank or a qualifying commercial bank under Article 29 of the Decree and Article 4 of Order [2021] No. 1, through a single centralised account, and may only be used to execute users' payment instructions. Article 24 stops the institution paying users any interest or return on their balances. Whether the institution itself earns interest on the centralised deposit is not addressed in Order [2021] No. 1 or in the Decree, so we do not put a number on it in a model.

Not any more. The five-year term came from the 2010 Measures, which the 2024 Rules repealed; Decree 768 and the Rules print no validity period and no renewal procedure. Licensees apply instead for re-issue of a 长期有效 licence, and Alipay's register entry of 29 April 2026 now reads 有效期至 长期. Transition runs institution by institution under Rules Article 73, from 9 July 2024 to each licence's own expiry with a twelve-month floor, so there is no single deadline; the largest cohort's licences expired on 2 May 2026.

China is by far the largest flow of the three: 1,404.89 million people, and RMB 337.81 trillion of network payments through non-bank institutions in 2025 alone. What it does not offer is a de novo application anyone has recently won, so the entry cost is a target company and an onshore build rather than a filing. Japan takes a direct registration and prints no capital figure for funds transfer, though it prints no decision clock either. South Korea prints the capital, a three-month clock and a 100% float rule, which makes it the easiest of the three to budget.