Air China "tests the waters" with XRP payments, are Chinese companies cautiously planning their layout in overseas Crypto Assets?

A seemingly ordinary cross-industry cooperation announcement has dropped a deep-water bomb in the Crypto Assets and aviation industries in China and globally. On September 3, 2025, Webus International Limited (hereinafter referred to as Webus), an AI-driven mobility solutions provider listed on NASDAQ, announced a strategic cooperation agreement with Air China.

The most striking point in the announcement is that Webus plans to introduce XRP payment support for its travel service brand Wetour's overseas platform in the future, to serve more than 60 million "Phoenix Friends" members of Air China worldwide.

The news caused a stir in the market. Against the backdrop of China's strict restrictions on the trading and use of Crypto Assets, the association of China Southern Airlines, a state-owned flagship airline, with XRP payments undoubtedly carries contradictions and imaginative possibilities. However, a closer examination of this meticulously worded announcement reveals not a loosening of Chinese regulatory policies, but a larger and more cautious picture: Chinese enterprises are cautiously "testing the waters" and laying out their strategies for the overseas Crypto Assets economy through innovative models.

Breakthrough Keywords

According to the official press release issued by Webus, the core content of this cooperation is that its high-end travel service brand Wetour will provide airport pickup and high-end car services for China National Aviation's "Phoenix Zhiyin" members and global passengers. This is a typical cross-border alliance of "aviation + travel", aimed at enhancing the travel experience for high-end passengers.

The role of Crypto Assets is cleverly placed within a framework that is full of foresight but also laden with prerequisites. The announcement clearly states: The implementing entity is Webus: It is not China National Airlines directly accepting XRP, but rather its partner Webus plans to support XRP payments on its platform. The service platform is the "overseas platform": The announcement emphasizes that XRP payment support will apply to Wetour's "overseas platform", which precisely limits the application scenario to areas outside of mainland China. The timeline is "the future": This is not an immediately effective service, but a plan to "look ahead". The premise for implementation is "compliance": The advancement of the entire plan is clearly "subject to future business development and regulatory compliance."

Webus CEO Zheng Nan stated that this move aims to "build a tourism ecosystem integrated with Ripple," and is expected to provide travelers with faster settlement speeds, tokenized rewards, and blockchain certificates directly linked to membership benefits.

This series of cautious wording is not accidental; it reflects a profound understanding and avoidance of China's strict regulatory policies. It is well known that the mainland of China expressly prohibits any form of Crypto Assets trading and payment activities. As a state-owned enterprise directly regulated by the central government, Air China cannot accept Crypto Assets such as XRP in its main business operations (such as ticket sales and domestic loyalty services) within its territory.

Therefore, the "overseas platform" has become the key to breaking the deadlock in the entire cooperation model. This design means that members of "Phoenix Zhi Yin" located overseas will be able to use XRP to pay for the dedicated car service provided by Wetour in countries and regions where encryption currency regulations are permitted. This cleverly isolates the application scenarios of crypto assets from the regulatory red lines within China, allowing Air China to indirectly participate in the global wave of innovation in Web3 without violating domestic laws.

This model demonstrates a remarkable business acumen: the core business adheres to domestic compliance while exploring and applying cutting-edge technology within permissible limits through international partners or overseas branches.

New Paradigm of "Going Abroad"

The cooperation between Webus and China National Airlines is by no means an isolated case. It reveals an increasingly clear trend: against the backdrop of strict regulations in the domestic market, more and more Chinese enterprises with an international perspective are cautiously and actively embracing the global Crypto Assets economy through similar "going abroad" models. This strategy of "blooming inside the wall while fragrant outside" enables them to selectively capture incremental opportunities in overseas markets while maintaining stability and compliance in their domestic operations, avoiding being completely left behind in the global technological wave.

For example, China's leading supply chain fintech company Linklogis announced in August 2025 that it would integrate its trillion-dollar supply chain finance platform with the XRP Ledger for the tokenization of Real World Assets (RWA), global payments, and trade financing. Its logic is similar to Webus—optimizing its massive international operations using blockchain technology, while its core business still adheres to domestic regulations.

These cases collectively outline a new paradigm: enterprises focus the application of blockchain and Crypto Assets on areas such as cross-border payments, international trade, and overseas user services, leveraging their efficiency and low-cost characteristics to enhance their competitiveness in the global market. This is not only an active exploration of cutting-edge technology but also a pragmatic choice for seeking innovative development within the existing regulatory framework.

However, despite the strong "gimmick" of this cooperation, the reaction from the Crypto Assets market has been rather calm. After the announcement, the price of XRP did not see the expected surge. Analysts believe that the market has become more mature and is able to distinguish between "cooperation announcements" and "full implementation." Investors clearly see that the implementation of the plan faces complex regulatory approvals worldwide, and there is also significant uncertainty regarding the scale and timeline of actual user adoption.

In addition, there have been precedents for cooperation between the aviation industry and Crypto Assets, such as AirAsia and KLM, which have made similar attempts but have not had a lasting and profound impact on the market.

However, we must not underestimate the long-term significance of this cooperation. If the model of Webus and Air China can be successfully implemented, it will set an important benchmark for the integration of loyalty programs in the global aviation and tourism industry with Web3 solutions. It will specifically demonstrate how to utilize Crypto Assets to provide tangible value to a global user base of tens of millions—better payment experiences, more attractive tokenized incentives, and more transparent value circulation.

In summary, the news about Air China accepting XRP payments reveals far more than the headline of "an airline accepting Crypto Assets" suggests. It is not a story about radical adoption, but rather a tale of skillfully navigating a complex regulatory environment.

It clearly demonstrates that leading enterprises in China are not blind to the technological revolution of Web3, but are cautiously extending their tentacles in a highly pragmatic, extremely careful, and creatively rich manner, exploring their own future path. This "payment experiment" taking place on overseas platforms will not only provide new ideas for the digital transformation of the aviation industry, but also offers an extremely valuable and thought-provoking model for observing how large Chinese enterprises navigate the global wave of Web3 while adhering to policy bottom lines and striving not to be left behind by the times.