The Distillery: China's Superapp Platform, Open Standard Launches OUSD, and Rolls-Royce's SMR plans

July 2026

Telecoms & Connectivity

Juniper Research

Analyst House

In this edition:

• China’s superapp platform to make an app for international travellers - China’s Tencent is developing an app called TenPayGo.
• Open standard launches Open USD - OUSD is backed by over 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and others.
• Our latest customer payments Tech Horizon provides an insight into the crucial players in the payments space.
• Rolls-Royce SMR plans to open its ‘Pioneer Works’ manufacturing development centre in Derby.
• Our conversation with Visa, the leading vendor in our eCommerce Fraud Prevention Market 2025-2030 report.
• Our Fintech and Payments FDA award winners have been announced. Find out who they are.

FINTECH & PAYMENTS

China’s Superapp Platform Tencent Is Developing an App for International Travellers

In a bid to make China’s digital payments ecosystem more accessible to international travellers, Tencent is piloting an app called TenPayGo. The app will connect WeChatPay - a popular Chinese payment app - to foreign payment methods, which will allow tourists to use their local, familiar digital payment methods when visiting China.

Tencent originally launched WeChatPay as a messaging platform, which evolved into the ability to make payments in chat, then towards integrating shopping, messaging, and payments into the same ecosystem. It is one of the most popular mobile payment systems in China, along with Alipay.

Distilled…

🟣 A Blueprint for Helping Tourists Navigate a Cashless Society - Currently, China’s payments ecosystem is largely cashless, with some merchants in major metropolitan areas not accepting cash or international cards at all. Instead, customers scan QR codes at checkout, and use popular superapps such as WeChat and Alipay to pay. While tourists can download these apps, make accounts, and upload their cards, there are foreign card restrictions at some merchants. Being able to pay through local methods will simplify the payments’ process for users who do not hold a domestic Chinese bank account. As more and more countries’ payment ecosystems begin to revolve around local payments methods, and cash becomes less prevalent, more countries may choose to take this route to encourage international tourism.

🟣 China Could Overtake the US as World’s Leading Tourism Destination - The National Immigration Administration recorded 82 million entries and exits in China in 2025; up 26% from the year before. This reflects an expansion in visa-free arrangements and long-term infrastructure investment in developing tourism zones; making it easier for overseas visitors to enter China. As the US sees a corresponding decline in visitors - a 5.5% decline from the previous year - China could overtake it to become the world’s biggest tourist destination.

🟣 China is Making Cross-border Payments a Priority: This measure by TenPay builds on previous initiatives that create bilateral links between payment systems. For example, the central banks of Indonesia and China have linked their retail QR code systems together; allowing Chinese tourists to pay Indonesian merchants using the UnionPay app and Alipay. Conversely, Indonesian visitors can pay Chinese merchants using major local digital wallets such as OVO and GoPay. This makes the UnionPay payment network interoperable across seven of the 11 ASEAN nations; reflecting the importance that China places on payments as a facilitator of international travel and tourism revenue.

MORE FINTECH INSIGHTS

💸 Chargeback Management: The Fightback Against Friendly Fraud [Whitepaper]

📱 Monzo Takes Another Step Towards Super-app Status with the Launch of Its Mobile Plan [Blog]

🏦 Pay by Bank Pursues the American Dream [Blog]

FINTECH & PAYMENTS

Open Standard Launches Open USD, a Consortium Stablecoin Backed By 140+ Companies

On the 30th June 2026, a coalition of more than 140 companies unveiled Open Standard, a newly formed independent entity, and its dollar-backed stablecoin, Open USD (OUSD). The company and stablecoin will be collectively governed by a consortium spanning payment networks, banks, fintechs, and crypto-native firms, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, and others; with a live launch set for later in 2026. Open Standard has not yet disclosed on which blockchain networks the stablecoin will be rolled out on, however Solana, a Layer 1 network, announced it will support OUSD launches natively from day one.

Notably, two dominant stablecoin incumbents, Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), are not part of the consortium, and as a result, Circle’s shares fell within hours of the announcement. This is because, unlike incumbent issuers, OUSD charges nothing to mint or redeem at any volume, whilst returning all reserve earnings to partner companies less a small management fee. Open Standard marks a turning point in the stablecoin industry and the business models supporting it.

Distilled…

🟣 OUSD inverts the economic model that has underpinned the stablecoin market to date. Traditionally, issuers profit by holding reserves in short-term US Treasuries and retaining the yield. For Circle, this reserve interest accounted for approximately 99% of its revenue in 2024. By redistributing the majority of this income to distribution partners, Open Standard is directly competing with incumbent issuer economics – pushing the playing field from who controls the largest, most liquid token, towards who can assemble the broadest network of distributors with a financial incentive in pushing it.

🟣 Whilst the Open Standard consortium consists of heavy hitters in the space, it is absent from some of the largest US banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup, who are pursuing tokenised bank deposits instead. This is not coincidental, as banks with large, defensible deposit franchises have every incentive to tokenise their own deposits and keep balances on their own books. Institutions without that moat gain far more from backing shared external infrastructure. Therefore, OUSD should be read as a coalition, in opposition to a tokenised-deposit bloc, rather than the unified front its scale suggests.

🟣 Consortium stablecoins have struggled to scale in the past, and governance may prove to be a harder constraint than distribution reach. Paxos’ Global Dollar Network (USDG), built on the same shared-reserve premise, has reached only around $3 billion in supply since its late-2024 launch. Similarly, the payment networks backing OUSD previously backed Facebook’s Libra in 2019, only to abandon it within months under regulatory pressure – though the GENIUS Act and MiCA now offer the regulatory clarity Libra lacked. Even so, aligning a coalition of more than 140 members, several of them direct competitors, on fee-splits, blockchain strategy, and governance will likely prove harder than the technology itself.

GET THE WHITEPAPER

MORE FINTECH INSIGHTS

🪙 The Scramble for Stablecoins Is Underway [Blog]

🌍 Stablecoin Cross-border B2B Transactions to Reach $5 Trillion by 2035, Causing Disruption to Correspondent Banking Channels [Research]

FINTECH & PAYMENTS

The Consumer Payments Tech Horizon

Our latest Consumer Payments Tech Horizon provides a visual representation of crucial players in the payments space and points out the top three major movers in the market. Our unique 'above-the line/below-the-line' metric tracks the stage of development and market performance of significant payment technologies. These are the key technologies that Juniper Research anticipates will experience the greatest development and increase in performance over the next year.

The Consumer Payments Tech Horizon aims to help stakeholders understand how different payment technologies are evolving, enables better strategic decision-making, and anticipation of future market developments. The Tech Horizon also helps stakeholders understand which opportunities they must invest in now to be early movers and capitalise on the growth in revenue from each technology over the next 12 months.

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SMART CITIES & SUSTAINABILITY

Rolls Royce Announces Plans to Open Small Modular Reactor Manufacturing in Derby, UK, as SMR Industry Scales Up 

Rolls Royce SMR, a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) specialist in the UK, announced this week that it plans to open what it is calling ‘Pioneer Works’ in Derby in the UK. This is a manufacturing development centre where it will establish the build processes, precision assembly and advanced testing needed to de-risk the delivery of its SMR fleet in the UK, Czechia and now Sweden.

The new facility, set to open in Q4 2026, will develop and validate the techniques, technologies and processes required to assemble the primary circuit and highest integrity components that sit at the heart of the nuclear power plant. This is the latest sign that SMR technology is scaling up to meet the hype, and it will have a significant impact on how energy is generated.

Distilled…

🟣 SMRs Holds the Promise of Reducing Nuclear Costs & Delays: This development reflects the promise SMRs hold for powering future energy needs. SMRs are billed as being most cost effective and easier to manufacture on standardised designs; making roll-outs easier. This is critical, as traditional nuclear energy sources are very expensive to roll out, and the process can take decades. Recent weeks have seen multiple commitments to roll out SMRs in Europe; intensifying the potential.

🟣 Datacentres Intensifying Need for SMR Roll Out: The rapid rise in the need for datacentres has put pressure on energy grids – sudden increases in demand are difficult for current infrastructure to deal with. As such, SMRs represent an important way to bring extra capacity into the grid, without the delays that go along with traditional energy sources.

🟣 SMRs Still Face Challenges: Potential, commitments, and hype continue to build, but we have still yet to see large numbers of SMRs actually be deployed in practice. Over time, this will likely emerge, as the investment into SMR technologies has been significant. However, the concept that SMRs will be significantly easier to roll out than traditional plants is yet to be tested in practice – regulatory standards will have to evolve in order to unlock rapid enough roll-outs to solve the challenges energy grids face.

FINTECH & PAYMENTS

eCommerce Fraud Prevention - An Interview with Visa

Our recently published report titled eCommerce Fraud Prevention Market 2025-2030 found Visa to be the leading vendor. Visa’s strong global network, the quality of its AI-driven fraud decisioning, and the powerful impact of its investments, such as the acquisition of Featurespace in 2024, found Visa to be the pioneer in the market.

Our VP of Research, Nick Maynard conversed with Eric Goodman, VP of Acceptance Risk and Authentication Solutions at Visa, to discuss how eCommerce fraud is evolving, the solutions being developed to fight back, and why Visa is leading the market. 

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FUTURE DIGITAL AWARDS

The Winners for Future Digital Awards for Fintech & Payments Are Announced! 🏆

The award honours exceptional trailblazers in the fintech and payments industry; celebrating both the companies breaking new ground and the individuals steering innovation and growth.

Congratulations to all the winners! 

VIEW WINNERS

FREE WEBINAR

The Untapped Asset: Unlocking Operators' Revenue with Utility IoT Partnerships

Utilities aren't just another IoT customer - they could be a mobile operator's most valuable long-term partner.

Electricity, gas and water providers operate millions of connected assets across wide geographic areas, with infrastructure expected to last for decades. The data is there. The challenge is turning it into operational insight.

Join Juniper Research and Motive as they explore this next wave of moving from connectivity to intelligence, and how it will impact the IoT market.

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THE LAST DROP

🪙 Fan Tokens & Digital Payments: How the 2026 World Cup Could Accelerate Financial Inclusion [Blog]

🏦 Nubank’s MVNO Now Has 1 Million Customers, How Much More Can it Grow? [Blog]

💱 The Top Three Drivers of Network Tokenisation Adoption [Whitepaper]

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