At the recently held 2026 PayPal Greater China Cross-Border E-commerce Conference in Shenzhen, Su Lei, Senior Director and Head of China Sales at PayPal, shared insights in an exclusive interview. He highlighted that amid intense global competition, Chinese cross-border e-commerce merchants are demonstrating remarkable resilience and supply chain flexibility. At the same time, AI is fundamentally reshaping both consumer shopping paths and merchant operational models.

According to data from the General Administration of Customs, China's exports grew 13.4% year-on-year in the first half of 2026. However, behind this scale growth, overseas-expanding enterprises are confronting multiple operational challenges, including rising customer acquisition costs and the continuous evolution of digital trade rules. Su Lei noted that while external policies and regulations have undergone significant shifts between 2025 and 2026, PayPal's Greater China merchant transaction volume and revenue have still maintained double-digit growth, a testament to the resilience and supply chain agility of Chinese cross-border merchants in the fiercely competitive global arena.

The cross-border e-commerce sector is now entering a new phase of refined, globalized operations. PayPal data reveals that over the past 12 months, approximately 50 million consumers across more than 100 countries and regions have purchased goods and services from Greater China merchants via PayPal, with repeat buyers accounting for over half of the total. Su Lei has identified several notable trends in Chinese merchants' global expansion. The first is diversification in product categories and business scope. While traditional cross-border e-commerce has focused on apparel and electronics, recent years have seen the emergence of new sectors such as cultural tourism, gaming, and short-form dramas, all showing robust growth momentum. The second trend is the diversification of market presence. Previously, Chinese merchants concentrated largely on developed markets in Europe and the United States, but this year they have expanded further into developing economies, including Belt and Road Initiative partner countries, thereby broadening their operational footprint.

PayPal has announced plans to dramatically expand its Multi-Currency Pricing support from 22 to 106 currencies. Additionally, the Multi-Currency Withdrawal feature now adds euro and pound sterling withdrawal capabilities, allowing merchants to withdraw foreign currency balances directly from their PayPal accounts to local or global bank accounts, effectively avoiding double conversion losses. This feature currently supports withdrawals to 48 countries and regions, with each account able to link up to eight bank accounts, enabling merchants to directly use corresponding currencies for supplier payments and local operations. The multi-currency withdrawal function is currently in internal testing with invited merchants and will gradually open up to a broader range of cross-border enterprises.

AI is conspicuously transforming consumer shopping journeys and altering the operational models of numerous merchants. PayPal has maintained AI as a strategic core for nearly a decade, deeply integrating it into business segments such as transactions, risk management, and fund allocation. Su Lei offered an example: "Some merchants are still using older PayPal API interfaces and need to upgrade, yet they lack dedicated technical teams. We provide a relatively straightforward solution — leveraging AI assistants to guide merchants through a full-stack upgrade, requiring only minimal token consumption."

Su Lei contends that the development of intelligent agents is still in its infancy, currently finding primary application in decision support. In the first phase, for instance, European and American consumers employ large language models for multimodal searches, entering keywords to compare prices across brands and products or to review other consumers' feedback on actual usage experiences. Su Lei points out that a second phase could emerge where each individual possesses their own commerce-oriented intelligent agent to aid in shopping decisions. Going further, agents could, with appropriate authorization, directly execute purchases on the consumer's behalf. "This could fundamentally transform current shopping habits and may further elevate the penetration rate of overseas e-commerce markets, creating more opportunities for Chinese merchants' cross-border business development."

"In response to the evolution of AI agents, PayPal is also exploring ways to help Chinese merchants gain visibility on overseas AI platforms and agent applications such as Gemini and ChatGPT, while completing payments through PayPal to close the final loop in the commercial transaction chain," Su Lei stated. However, he candidly acknowledged that numerous challenges remain to be resolved along this path. Historically, risk control models and capital flow arrangements have been optimized around human user scenarios, login IP addresses, and country-specific risk frameworks. If transactions are executed between intelligent agents, this will impose new demands on payment institutions, necessitating corresponding adjustments to payment infrastructure. Furthermore, cross-border operations involve data separation issues. Given the differences between domestic and international large language models, much data has yet to be interconnected. Under the regulatory requirements of various countries concerning consumer privacy and merchant information protection, determining how to properly store diverse data and advance data interconnectivity represents a new frontier that PayPal has been exploring in collaboration with UnionPay, Visa, and Google.