The 2025 annual report season has concluded, with major payment institutions having disclosed their full-year results. The payment industry in China has now fully transitioned from a period of rapid expansion to a stable development phase. Overall industry transaction volume growth has slowed, and competition for existing market share has intensified. Concurrently, the continuous improvement of the regulatory framework and ongoing technological innovations are reshaping the industry's evolution, driving a cyclical adjustment from scale expansion to quality upgrades. This has further highlighted the diverging operational performance among different institutions.
Against this backdrop, domestic market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Cross-border payment has emerged as a critical lever for many payment institutions to break through growth bottlenecks, with a growing number of companies shifting their strategic focus overseas to seek new growth avenues. An analysis of disclosed results reveals significant structural divergence among listed payment companies: traditional merchant acquisition businesses are generally under pressure, while institutions with cross-border capabilities or value-added service support have achieved growth in both revenue and profit. The industry's growth logic has shifted from relying on transaction scale to depending on business structure optimization and compliance capability building.
Domestic merchant acquisition growth has peaked, with profit quality replacing scale expansion as the key metric. In 2025, China's third-party payment industry entered a deep development stage characterized by standardization and maturity. The growth rate of transaction volume continued to slow, the divergence in institutional performance intensified further, and profit quality superseded scale expansion as the key indicator of a company's core competitiveness.
From an overall industry perspective, user penetration in the domestic third-party payment market is nearing saturation, marking the definitive end of the era of explosive transaction volume growth. Personal payment penetration has hit a ceiling, while the corporate payment sector, through deeper scenario integration, has demonstrated stronger growth resilience.
The performance of YK Group serves as a representative example. The company achieved annual revenue of RMB 33.11 billion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 7.25%. Profit attributable to equity holders was RMB 92.244 million, up 11.88% year-on-year, indicating double-digit growth at the profit level. However, the Gross Payment Volume (GPV) of its domestic payment business was RMB 2.34 trillion, a mere 0.1% increase compared to the previous year. This figure直观 reflects the sluggish growth in the domestic payment market. To counter these challenges, YK Group increased its domestic payment fee rate from 11.5 basis points in 2024 to 12.3 basis points in 2025, driving an 8.0% year-on-year increase in its one-stop payment service revenue to RMB 29.02 billion.
Lianlian DigiTech achieved growth in both revenue and net profit during this industry adjustment period. For the full year 2025, the company's total revenue reached RMB 1.734 billion, a 31.9% year-on-year increase, setting a new historical high. Gross profit grew 28% year-on-year to RMB 873 million, indicating stable profitability. Notably, although the company reported a net profit of RMB 1.662 billion, which included gains from equity disposals, its adjusted operating profit—after excluding all non-operating items including the Lian Tong disposal gain—reached RMB 82.26 million, doubling with a 105.9% year-on-year increase. During the reporting period, the company focused resources on serving the high-value needs of Chinese enterprises going global, which in turn solidified the foundation for its domestic payment business and continuously improved its growth quality. In 2025, the gross profit margin for its domestic payment business rose to 23%, an increase of 3.3 percentage points year-on-year.
Lakala Payment Co.,Ltd. saw a slight decrease in revenue but a significant surge in profit for 2025. Data shows that operating income for the period was RMB 5.547 billion, a decrease of 3.68% year-on-year. However, net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company surged by 233.33% to RMB 1.171 billion. After deducting non-recurring gains and losses, its attributable net profit was RMB 301 million, a decrease of 45.58% year-on-year, primarily dragged down by a decline in payment business revenue.
Breaking down the business segments, Lakala's digital payment business generated revenue of RMB 4.874 billion, down 5.65% year-on-year, mainly affected by overall pressure on bankcard payments. Its technology service business revenue was RMB 408 million, up 44.05% year-on-year, primarily due to the consolidation of Tiancai Shanglong starting from June. Revenue from other businesses was RMB 266 million, down 14.39% year-on-year. The sharp profit increase was largely influenced by non-operational factors: firstly, an increase in the fair value change of listed company equity assets held by the company; and secondly, a substantial growth in investment income realized from the sale of part of its holdings in listed companies.
In terms of payment transaction volume, Lakala's comprehensive domestic merchant acquisition transaction amount was RMB 3.94 trillion, down 6.75% year-on-year. Within this, bankcard transaction volume was RMB 2.47 trillion, down 13.73% year-on-year, while scan-to-pay transaction volume was RMB 1.47 trillion, up 7.90% year-on-year. It is noteworthy that since the second quarter of 2025, the company's scan-to-pay transaction volume has achieved both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth for three consecutive quarters. This is mainly attributed to an increase in the number of active merchants using code plates and AI wallets, as well as the open platform connecting more medium and large-sized industry clients.
Rendong Holding, the parent company of HeliPay, achieved a performance turnaround following its restructuring. In 2025, Rendong Holding saw its net assets turn positive and returned to profitability, reporting a net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 359.6 million, a surge of 143.17% year-on-year. After deducting non-recurring items, the attributable net profit was RMB 42.6545 million, up 129.14% year-on-year. The core driver behind this turnaround was its payment business. Its subsidiary, HeliPay, as the core payment business operator, contributed approximately RMB 784 million, accounting for 95.32% of Rendong Holding's revenue.
Beyond these leading institutions, the performance of other payment-related companies showed significant divergence. Gaoyang Technology, whose licensed payment institution is Sui Xing Fu, reported consolidated turnover of HKD 2.1185 billion for 2025, down 9% year-on-year. It recorded a total annual loss of HKD 146 million, compared to a profit of HKD 176.6 million in 2024. The primary reason for this shift from profit to loss was a decline in turnover from the Payment and Digital Services segment. As Gaoyang's main revenue source, this segment reported annual turnover of HKD 1.642 billion, down 6% year-on-year, with an operating loss of HKD 187.5 million. The performance pressure on Sui Xing Fu directly dragged down the group's overall results.
Cuiwei股份, the parent company of Hi Sun, reported operating revenue of RMB 2.320 billion for 2025, up 4.08% year-on-year. Its net profit attributable to shareholders was a loss of RMB 481 million, narrowing by 30.01% compared to the previous year's loss. Hi Sun, as Cuiwei's core payment entity, delivered a strong performance in domestic merchant acquisition in 2025, achieving a total acquisition transaction volume of RMB 1.16 trillion, a 23% year-on-year increase. Within this, traditional merchant acquisition transaction volume reached RMB 977.2 billion, up 13% year-on-year, while the digital payment business achieved rapid growth, with transaction volume up 141% year-on-year.
In 2025, Jialian Payment, under Xinguodu, processed approximately RMB 1.47 trillion in cumulative transaction flow for the year, remaining largely flat compared to the previous year, with monthly transaction flow trends gradually stabilizing. However, influenced by adjustments in new merchant acquisition strategies and increased marketing support, the company's revenue from merchant acquisition and value-added services was approximately RMB 1.964 billion, down 7.03% year-on-year.
Observations indicate that the domestic merchant acquisition market has entered a stage of stock competition, with transaction volume growth stagnating or even declining. The main reasons cited are insufficient activity among offline small and micro merchants, ongoing regulatory efforts to compress arbitrage opportunities, and the intensified squeeze effect from leading platforms on independent acquirers. The fundamental reasons are identified as follows: firstly, declining transaction volume from small and micro merchants directly impacts acquirer transaction scale; secondly, the normalization of regulatory crackdowns on non-compliant business practices has ended the model of obtaining excess returns through practices like code jumping and cash-out arbitrage; thirdly, leading platforms are deeply penetrating the merchant side through ecosystem bindings, such as aggregated payments and mini-programs, leaving independent acquirers, who lack proprietary traffic and user stickiness, struggling to maintain their market share in an environment of fee rate transparency. Therefore, it can be concluded that the merchant acquisition business has transitioned from incremental expansion to a stock optimization phase prioritizing efficiency.
Cross-border payment is accelerating as a breakout strategy, shifting from land grab to compliance-focused deepening. Amid sluggish domestic payment market growth and intensifying stock competition, cross-border payment, supported by both policy tailwinds and market demand, has become a core direction for payment institutions to break through growth bottlenecks. Looking globally, the overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises is entering a phase of qualitative leap, with cross-border payment upgrading from channel services to a global fund service network.
Lianlian DigiTech designated 2025 as a pivotal year for the comprehensive deepening of its globalization strategy, accelerating its transformation into a new-generation multinational company. In 2025, Lianlian's Total Payment Volume (TPV) reached RMB 452.4 billion, surging 60.7% year-on-year. Revenue from this segment was RMB 1.045 billion, a significant increase of 29.3%, far exceeding the industry average growth rate. By the end of 2025, Lianlian's global payment licenses and relevant qualifications had expanded to 66, with service coverage extending to over 100 countries and regions, supporting transaction settlement in more than 130 currencies.
Lakala's cross-border payment business also performed notably well. Its transaction volume reached RMB 88.9 billion in 2025, up 80.69% year-on-year, serving over 210,000 customers, a 73.99% increase. In the first quarter of 2026, its cross-border payment business continued its rapid growth trend, with transaction volume up 39% year-on-year and the number of merchants served growing 62% year-on-year.
Leveraging a localized operation strategy, YK Group achieved leapfrog growth in its overseas payment business. In 2025, the GPV of its overseas payment business was approximately RMB 5 billion, a substantial increase of 323.3% year-on-year. In terms of profitability, YK's overseas payment fee rate reached 60 basis points, with a gross profit margin of about 50%, significantly higher than its domestic business. Although the overseas business GPV currently contributes only about 0.2% to the total payment business, its profit contribution has already reached about 3%, becoming an important engine for the group's profit growth.
HeliPay has been continuously strengthening its efforts in the cross-border payment field in recent years, achieving high-speed growth in both customer numbers and transaction scale. Its cross-border payment transaction volume in 2025 was approximately RMB 82.5 billion, up about 159% year-on-year. Jialian Payment, under Xinguodu, is also making accelerated breakthroughs in cross-border payments, with its 2025 cross-border payment transaction volume exceeding RMB 2.4 billion, averaging over 100% quarterly sequential growth. Yiwu Pay, under China Small Commodity City, leveraging the unique ecosystem advantages of Yiwu's small commodity trade, had accumulated cross-border collection volume of $11.2 billion by the end of 2025. It opened cross-border collection accounts for over 25,000 merchants, with business covering 176 countries and regions and supporting 29 major currency exchanges.
Overall, cross-border payment has become the core direction for payment institutions to break through the domestic ceiling, but the competitive landscape is highly uneven. First movers have built barriers with licenses, clearing networks, and local compliance capabilities, while latecomers face pressures of high entry barriers and long investment cycles. Predictions suggest that based on developments over the past year, cross-border payment will shift from a land-grab phase to a focus on compliance deepening, putting a premium on foreign exchange settlement efficiency, anti-money laundering systems, data localization, and local merchant service capabilities.
The key for most institutions to balance domestic and overseas strategies lies in using the stable cash flow generated by domestic business to support the construction of cross-border compliance systems, rather than simply shifting resources or creating buzzwords. Simultaneously, they must stop relying on non-core methods like asset sales or assisted lending to embellish financial statements and truly focus on building underlying capabilities. Otherwise, the so-called "second growth curve" will be difficult to realize, and the industry will further consolidate towards leading platforms possessing full-chain cross-border service capabilities.
AI is reconstructing the entire payment chain, with institutions racing to lead intelligent transformation. Currently, AI technology has become a core direction for technological innovation in the payment industry. An increasing number of payment institutions are adopting AI as a key lever to optimize operational efficiency, enhance service value, and build differentiated competitiveness.
From an industry practice perspective, AI technology has gradually transitioned from an early-stage technological reserve to a core infrastructure for payment institutions, deeply penetrating all business chains including payments, risk control, customer service, and merchant empowerment. This is driving the industry's transformation from "digitalization" to "intelligentization."
Lianlian DigiTech has elevated "Technology Upgrade" to a core company strategy. The company's founder, Chairman, and CEO announced a strategic leap—from being a "Cross-border Payment Expert" to comprehensively upgrading into an "AI-Native Global Intelligent Financial New Infrastructure." He emphasized that Lianlian's "AI-native" approach is not a superficial label but is rooted in business fundamentals, embedding AI into every link of products, risk control, operations, and services, making it the "new gene" of the business. The company aims to build a new generation of financial infrastructure for the AI Agent era across three dimensions: reconstructing payment forms, reshaping customer relationships, and upgrading organizational DNA.
Specifically, this involves shifting from "money finding people" to "money finding people," creating an Agent-driven intelligent commercial system payment base; transitioning from focusing on its own "payment pipeline" to becoming a "growth engine" for customers; and building a "silicon-based" fintech company, using full-link Agent-ization to construct core barriers. Data shows that in 2025, Lianlian DigiTech continued to increase R&D investment, with annual R&D expenses reaching RMB 361 million, up 13% year-on-year (17.6% excluding share-based compensation), primarily directed towards blockchain and digital assets, and the expansion of AI technology applications in business systems and scenarios.
YK Group established a dedicated institution as early as 2017 to track and research cutting-edge innovative technologies. Data shows that in the second half of 2025, the volume of AI-generated video transactions within YK's merchant solutions grew 110% compared to the first half, accounting for over 40% of total video transactions. In its on-site e-commerce services, YK created "AI virtual employees" to assist merchants with daily operations and delivery, significantly optimizing service processes and reducing operating costs. By 2025, the proportion of content generated by AI technology exceeded 50%. The deep application of AI technology effectively drove the advertising transaction volume of YK's merchant solutions to RMB 3.6 billion, an increase of about 13% over the previous year, setting a new record. The full-year Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of its on-site e-commerce business exceeded RMB 4.4 billion, rising nearly 50% year-on-year, becoming a key support for business growth.
Jialian Payment is also focusing on the practical application of AI technology, investing significantly in operational automation and AI intelligence construction to achieve deep penetration of AI technology across multiple scenarios. Similarly, other players are deepening the application of AI technology based on smart consumption scenarios. Efforts are focused on strengthening transaction risk control and anti-fraud capabilities with AI to fortify security, while also exploring AI innovations in areas like smart customer service and seamless payment experiences. The goal is to upgrade payment from a single transaction link to a core engine driving the digital intelligence, cost reduction, and efficiency improvement of the consumption industry, creating smarter consumption service experiences for merchants and consumers.
Rendong Holding, with the strategic vision of "Payment Empowering Industry, AI Leading the Future," is actively laying out in AI-related fields, striving to build a "closed-loop intelligent technology ecosystem." In 2025, the company established "Rendong AI Computing" subsidiaries in Shenzhen, Beijing, and Ulanqab, extending its business reach into the AI chip and computing power track to complete its AI industry layout.
The strategic logic is to use HeliPay's core payment business as a traffic entry point and data source, utilize AI technology to convert data into algorithms and computing power, and then feed that computing power back into scenarios like cross-border trade and industrial digitalization. Through the deep integration of "Payment + AI," the company aims to elevate its competitive advantage from单一的 payment services to全产业链的 technology empowerment.
HeliPay also explicitly stated in its annual report that, according to future business arrangements in the company's restructuring plan and based on its actual situation, besides continuously deepening its primary payment business, it will actively plan and lay out a second growth curve. Adhering to the strategic vision of "Payment Empowering Industry, AI Leading the Future," it aims to create a symbiotic, co-creative, and shared intelligent technology industry ecosystem.
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