How China Ru Yi Digests Wanda's "Abandoned Child"

Wanda's another asset welcomes a new owner.

Recently, China Ruyi disclosed that its wholly-owned subsidiary Shanghai Ruyi Xingchen Enterprise Management has signed a transfer agreement with Shanghai Wanda Network Financial Services (hereinafter referred to as "Wanda Financial") for a 30% equity stake in Kuaiqian Financial Services (Shanghai) (hereinafter referred to as "Kuaiqian").

The equity is priced at 240 million yuan, to be paid in three installments, and upon completion of the acquisition, China Ruyi will become the largest single shareholder of Kuaiqian.

The value of Kuaiqian lies in its subsidiary, Kuaiqian Payment Clearing Information (hereinafter referred to as "Kuaiqian Payment"), which holds a third-party payment license.

To obtain this license, Wanda had previously invested over 2 billion yuan in a two-step acquisition;

However, under the current liquidity predicament, Wanda has no choice but to sell this license at a discount.

China Ruyi, which has already taken over the controlling stake in Wanda Cinemas, stated that Kuaiqian can create synergies with the company's online streaming, gaming, and offline cinema businesses;

China Ruyi believes: "Kuaiqian holds licenses covering internet payment, mobile payment, bank card acquiring, and cross-border RMB payment, accumulating rich merchant resources and industry experience in various sectors such as finance, insurance, aviation, travel, and retail."

Analysis of Value

Although the announcement emphasized the merchants and experience accumulated by Kuaiqian over the years, many market participants believe that the core value of Kuaiqian to China Ruyi still lies in the license itself.

In 2011, Kuaiqian obtained one of the first third-party payment licenses issued by the People's Bank of China, with a business scope that includes currency exchange, internet payment, mobile phone payment, and other core online and offline scenarios, regarded as a fully licensed institution.

With the popularity of e-commerce and mobile payments, regulations such as the "Administrative Measures for the Network Payment Business of Non-Bank Payment Institutions" have been introduced, imposing higher compliance requirements on payment institutions regarding their positioning and account management.

During its first renewal in 2016, Kuaiqian retained only three core businesses: internet payment, mobile phone payment, and bank card acquiring.

After 2024, the new regulatory framework will further clarify the classification of non-bank payment businesses into four subcategories;

Kuaiqian's business scope is confirmed as Class I for stored value account operations and Class I for payment transaction processing, corresponding to the most valuable internet payment and bank card acquiring businesses.

On one hand, while offline scenarios exhibit a Matthew effect, a monopoly trend under mobile APP payment businesses like Alipay and WeChat has not yet formed, allowing some survival space for small and medium-sized institutions;

On the other hand, such businesses have clear revenue sharing, with transaction fees ranging from 0.3% to 0.6%, covering high-frequency scenarios such as retail, catering, and cross-border payments, resulting in a naturally large transaction scale.

More importantly, Kuaiqian's Class I payment transaction processing is a nationwide license.

Among similar licenses approved by the People's Bank of China, about 40% have regional restrictions.

According to regulatory requirements, there is no minimum capital requirement for registering a Class I payment transaction processing license, but expanding across provinces requires an additional 5 million yuan per province, with a minimum registered capital limit of 100 million yuan, which means that payment institutions obtaining nationwide licenses are still in the minority.

The scarcity brought about by tightening policies also makes the significance of the license more pronounced.

Under the dual pressure of regulatory emphasis on the thresholds for controlling shareholders, actual controllers, and paid-in capital of payment institutions, along with the further monopolization of market shares by giants like Alipay and WeChat, various small and medium-sized third-party payment institutions continue to exit the market From 2014 to July 2025, the number of payment licenses issued by the central bank has shrunk from over 270 to 169, with only about 30 national payment transaction processing Class I licenses remaining.

For China Ruyi, which is currently flush with funds and has acquired Wanda Cinemas, the payment license of Kuaiqian, which can operate nationwide, still holds significant meaning.

However, Kuaiqian, as the acquisition target, also has its own issues.

Especially during the 10 years dominated by the "Wanda system," its performance has been far from satisfactory.

In 2014, the year Wanda took over, Kuaiqian's annual transaction volume still exceeded 2 trillion yuan, ranking second in the third-party payment market after UnionPay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay.

However, after Wanda fell into crisis in 2017 due to high-leverage expansion and liquidity pressure, it could no longer pay attention to Kuaiqian's business and even frequently sought buyers for it.

In December 2021, Kuaiqian's monthly transaction volume still maintained at 182.6 billion, but by October 2022, it sharply dropped to 24.5 billion; by the end of that year, Kuaiqian's transaction volume fell out of the top 20 in the industry, and its offline acquiring business completely shrank.

Market data indicates that Kuaiqian's monthly transaction volume in the first half of 2024 may be less than 1 billion yuan, a far cry from its peak of hundreds of billions.

In addition to the shrinking transaction volume, compliance issues also exist.

According to incomplete statistics from the wind, Kuaiqian received four fines from the central bank between 2022 and July 2025, totaling 17.16 million yuan (including personal fines), with violations concentrated in the areas of clearing, accounts, and anti-money laundering.

Before the acquisition by China Ruyi, Kuaiqian's operational situation was already lacking transparency.

Kuaiqian's entity faced a complete pledge of its company equity in 2024, and over 70% of its equity is still under pledge;

As of the end of 2023, the number of insured individuals for Kuaiqian Payment was 184.

Wanda's Loss-Making Situation

For Kuaiqian, which has finally changed hands and is considered a "hot potato," Wanda did not lack ambition.

When acquiring control of Kuaiqian, former Wanda Group President Ding Benxi stated that Kuaiqian would generate a strong synergy with Wanda E-commerce, accelerating the realization of the O2O (Online To Offline) model;

Ding Benxi pointed out, "If we fully integrate Kuaiqian's existing corporate partners, financial institutions, and Wanda's commercial partners and offline customer flow, Wanda will become the largest O2O enterprise in China."

Shortly after Wanda achieved full ownership of Kuaiqian in 2017, market rumors began to circulate about its sale, with potential buyers including Suning, Sinopec, Douyin, and others, with a transaction price around 1 billion yuan.

Although several institutions have acknowledged that they had negotiations with Wanda regarding the Kuaiqian license, the deal that ultimately materialized was the current 240 million yuan transaction with China Ruyi.

In terms of transaction price, Wanda incurred significant losses.

Based on the estimated share price from 2014, the 30% equity should correspond to a price of around 1 billion yuan;

However, against the backdrop of Wanda's financial predicament and the significant shrinkage of Kuaiqian's transaction scale, equity discount has become unavoidable.

At its peak, Wanda also held financial-related equity in banks, insurance, consumer finance, insurance brokerage, and microloans, but all have gradually been divested or relinquished their dominant positions Wanda's asset disposals have now extended from non-core businesses such as finance to its main businesses including real estate, cultural tourism, and commercial management.

Starting in 2023, Wanda has divested 80 commercial plazas, expecting to recover over 100 billion yuan; by 2025, it has fully transferred its equity in Wanda Hotel Management (Hong Kong) to Tongcheng Travel for nearly 2.5 billion yuan.

Intentions of China Ruyi

The founder and chairman of China Ruyi, Ke Liming, has a background in finance and worked as an analyst for many years in Australia and Hong Kong. After resigning from a hedge fund company in Hong Kong, he founded Ruyi Film in 2007.

In October 2020, Evergrande and Tencent's Hong Kong-listed company HengTeng Network acquired Ruyi Film and Pumpkin Film, owned by Ke Liming, for HKD 7.2 billion, allowing Ruyi Film to go public through a backdoor listing.

In the second half of 2021, Evergrande faced a liquidity crisis and chose to clear its equity holdings. Ke Liming was reappointed as director, and HengTeng Network was renamed China Ruyi.

Currently, the equity of China Ruyi is mainly concentrated in the hands of Ke Liming, Tencent, and Sunshine Life Insurance;

Its business scope has expanded to three main categories: film and television, streaming media, and gaming.

China Ruyi frequently interacts with major companies, engaging in deep cooperation from agency distribution to promotional operations.

One month after acquiring Wanda Film, China Ruyi further acquired 100% equity of ByteDance's gaming company Beijing Youai Interactive Entertainment for 259 million yuan;

One of Youai Interactive Entertainment's most famous works is "Red Alert OL," which was initially exclusively distributed by Tencent and was later "shelved" after ByteDance invested in Youai Interactive Entertainment.

In 2025, China Ruyi, in the form of "cash + equity," acquired 30% equity of Yonghang Technology, the developer of Tencent's "QQ Dance" series games, for 743 million yuan and issued 36.6667 million new shares to Tencent;

Subsequently, Tencent's stake in China Ruyi further increased to 17.71%, approaching Ke Liming's 18.28%, leading to jokes in the market about "reading as Ruyi Jingxiu, collaborating with Tencent Games."

From the business landscape and investment actions, it is not difficult to see that China Ruyi's demand for payment services is mainly concentrated in Wanda Cinemas and surrounding merchants, as well as in the continuously expanding gaming sector.

These two demands correspond to the offline acquiring license and internet payment license of Kuaiqian, with little involvement in the missing prepaid card and mobile phone payment licenses.

It is foreseeable that Kuaiqian's payment services will form synergies with China Ruyi's three major businesses.

For example, Wanda Cinemas could integrate the digital RMB payment system, Pumpkin Film's membership subscriptions and content on-demand could incorporate its payment interface, and Jingxiu Games could consider embedding payment modules.

However, the effectiveness of the synergy may still require time for verification.

If the transaction is approved, China Ruyi will become the largest single shareholder of Kuaiqian, but it will not be the controlling shareholder. In the future, more investment will be needed in business integration and coordinating the interests of existing shareholders