WasabiCard: As companies expand overseas into a growth phase, they need to manage their global expansion expenses wisely.
At the ChinaJoy 2026 B2B Business Pavilion, we engaged in in-depth discussions with numerous companies from the gaming, AI applications, internet platforms, and digital content industries. Compared to past events, where discussions primarily focused on “how to go global,” this year there was a more noticeable shift—increasingly, companies are paying closer attention to payment efficiency, fund management, and operational capabilities behind global expansion. For gaming, app, content platform, and AI tool teams, overseas markets are no longer merely opportunities for new growth, but essential and long-term growth territories that must be entered and actively cultivated.
Therefore, the focus of discussions has shifted. Previously, companies were primarily concerned with questions like “Should we expand overseas?”, “Which market should we enter first?”, and “How do we acquire our first overseas users?”; now, the conversation has moved into execution: how to maintain stable ad spending, how to ensure continuous payment for overseas SaaS and cloud services, how to allocate budgets across different markets, how to manage card usage and reconciliation across multiple teams, and how to maintain efficiency and security in cross-regional fund transfers.
Going global is transitioning from a strategic choice to a phase of scaled operations. While front-end products, channels, and content are rapidly expanding overseas, the back-end systems for payments, finance, budgeting, and risk control must also achieve global readiness.
The challenge of expanding overseas is shifting from "how to grow" to "how to sustain growth."
From WasabiCard’s perspective, today’s companies expanding overseas do not lack growth opportunities; the real challenge lies in whether they can support growth with a sufficiently stable, transparent, and controllable approach as their operations scale.
Expenses such as game user acquisition, app promotion, AI tool subscriptions, cloud service procurement, influencer collaborations, asset tools, agency services, and overseas team operations have become part of daily operations for companies expanding internationally. These expenditures are frequent, span multiple platforms, involve dispersed amounts, and often occur across different markets, teams, and business lines.
If businesses still rely on shared cards, personal advances, manual tracking, or post-hoc reconciliation to manage these expenses, the faster they grow, the greater the administrative pressure becomes. At first glance, the issue appears to be with payments; in reality, it impacts budget control, team collaboration, financial efficiency, and risk management.
During ChinaJoy 2026, WasabiCard also observed through discussions with multiple companies that an increasing number of teams are reevaluating the global payment system, aiming to establish more transparent, flexible, and traceable corporate expense management mechanisms—not merely focusing on whether a single payment can be completed.
Enterprises need more comprehensive payment infrastructure, not more cards.
Traditional corporate cards address the question of "whether payment is possible," but now, companies expanding overseas face more complex operational challenges: Can budgets be segmented by project? Can independent payment tools be configured for different platforms? Can abnormal transactions be detected in real time? Can the business team use funds efficiently while ensuring the finance team has full visibility and control?
This is also why WasabiCard continues to invest in enterprise-grade payment infrastructure.
With capabilities such as corporate virtual cards, global card issuance, multi-currency payments, team permission management, budget control, transaction tracking, and bill consolidation, WasabiCard helps outbound enterprises bring their previously fragmented overseas expenses—spread across different platforms, teams, and accounts—into a clearer, more manageable system.
In overseas advertising campaigns, businesses can create virtual cards separately for different platforms such as Meta, Google, and TikTok, or by country market, product line, or campaign. Each card is assigned to a specific purpose, budget, and responsible person, preventing accounting confusion caused by multiple users sharing a single card and making it easier to track and review every advertising expenditure.
In SaaS, cloud services, and tool subscriptions, businesses can centrally manage recurring expenses such as cloud servers, data analysis tools, collaboration software, design tools, AI tools, and marketing plugins, clearly tracking monthly recurring charges, associated teams, and payment statuses to reduce renewal risks caused by expired cards, insufficient limits, or employee turnover.
In cross-team operations, WasabiCard enables enterprises to set spending limits and card permissions by department, project, or role. Business teams can quickly complete everyday expenses such as purchasing materials, testing tools, and managing account services, while finance teams can monitor cash flow in real time, preventing issues like budget overruns or mismatched bills that are only discovered at month-end.
To meet broader global fund transfer needs, WasabiCard is continuously enhancing its global compliant card issuance, fund distribution, and API capabilities, enabling businesses to build more stable fund transfer networks in scenarios such as advertising payments, subscription purchases, commission settlements, creator revenue sharing, and supplier payments.
WasabiCard's assessment: To scale internationally, payment capabilities must also go global.
Going global isn't just about launching your product overseas. Companies that successfully sustain long-term operations in international markets need a foundational capability set that supports continuous business expansion—including payment efficiency, fund security, budget management, financial visibility, and compliance and risk control.
In the past, payments were merely one step in financial processes; today, in cross-border business, payments are increasingly at the heart of growth. Whether ads can launch promptly, tool subscriptions can renew smoothly, teams can execute budgets quickly, and funds can flow securely—all of these directly impact a company’s speed of response in overseas markets.
In the past, payments were merely one step in financial processes; today, in cross-border business, payments are increasingly at the heart of growth. Whether ads can launch promptly, tool subscriptions can renew smoothly, teams can execute budgets quickly, and funds can flow securely—all of these directly impact a company’s speed of response in overseas markets.
Compared to traditional cross-border payments, which may incur combined costs of around 3%–4% on certain channels and typically take 2 to 4 business days to settle under complex conditions, WasabiCard’s infrastructure is making global payments lower cost, faster, and more traceable. New pathways, such as global card issuance and real-time fund distribution, can reduce settlement costs to under 1% and enable near-instant settlement in appropriate scenarios.
ChinaJoy 2026 has further confirmed that the globalization of digital entertainment companies has entered a new phase. Future competition will not only be about products, content, and channels, but also about global payment capabilities, capital efficiency, and operational systems. For companies expanding overseas, effectively managing global growth expenditures is no longer just a financial matter—it is a critical competitive advantage for sustained growth.