Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS) will link with UnionPay International by the end of 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said on November 2. Once the link is live, FPS users will be able to pay by scanning QR codes at merchants in UnionPay’s network and its partner networks. The HKMA puts that network at more than 100 million merchants in Hong Kong, the Chinese Mainland and more than 40 overseas markets.
The announcement came during Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026, in an HKMA press release that listed four new initiatives. The UnionPay link is the one most people in Hong Kong will notice, because it is about paying in shops rather than about how banks run their back offices.
What the HKMA says will change
FPS is Hong Kong’s instant payment system, operated by Hong Kong Interbank Clearing Limited. The HKMA says the UnionPay link will “progressively” let users pay by scanning QR codes at UnionPay merchants, “for greater convenience in retail payments both locally and while travelling.”
The word “progressively” matters. The release gives an end-of-year date for the link itself. It does not say which markets come first, how quickly the rest follow, or which banks and wallets will offer the feature in their apps.
Financial Secretary Paul Chan gave the scale of the system in a speech at the same event. FPS has more than 22 million registrations in a city of 7.5 million people, and daily Hong Kong dollar payments averaged HK$16.2 billion last year. He said users “can pay in more places through a familiar service, while businesses can accept cross-border payments more easily.”
Not the first link abroad
FPS already connects outside Hong Kong. Chan pointed to existing links with the Mainland and Thailand. The Thai link, launched in December 2023, lets travelers between the two places pay by scanning the other side’s merchant QR codes in their own payment apps. At launch it ran through seven Hong Kong banks and two stored value facilities, so not every FPS app could use it.
That is the useful precedent here. A cross-border QR link usually reaches users through the specific apps that join it, not through every FPS app on day one.
What is still unknown
The November 2 release does not give fees, exchange rates, spending limits or a list of participating institutions. Those details decide whether paying by QR abroad is cheaper or easier than a card, and they are not public yet. Until a bank or wallet announces support, a Hong Kong user has nothing new to switch on.
The same release also covered Project SAGE, an HKMA project on agentic AI in finance and how to govern it, and a toolkit to help banks move to post-quantum cryptography. For how phone payments work at the counter today, see what a digital wallet is.
