Ctrip's overseas version launches stablecoin payment, supporting USDT and USDC

Written by: Joe Zhou, Foresight News

Trip.com, the overseas version of Ctrip, is quietly entering the stablecoin payment arena.

On December 25, 2025, Foresight News learned that Trip.com has launched stablecoin payment features for global users, currently supporting two US dollar stablecoins: USDT and USDC. Two individuals close to Trip confirmed this information to Foresight News.

After downloading and logging into Trip.com in Vietnam, I successfully completed a hotel booking in Nha Trang using USDT in less than 10 minutes.

What's even more noteworthy is that after comparing prices from several local hotels, I found that paying with USDT on the Trip.com App resulted in lower prices for some hotels compared to using the Ctrip official website or traditional payment methods.

Trip.com Supports USDT/USDC

On December 24, 2025, I booked a hotel in Nha Trang using USDT on the Trip.com app and successfully purchased a flight ticket from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City with USDT on December 25, both showing successful payment. I have now successfully checked into the hotel.

I found that the flight ticket purchased with USDT on Trip.com saved me about 18% compared to the ticket bought on Ctrip. The hotel booked with USDT saved me 2.35%.

Trip has launched USDT and USDC payments

Currently, Trip.com’s crypto payments support multiple public chains including Ethereum, Tron, Polygon, Solana, Arbitrum One, and TON.

During the payment process, I noticed the involvement of another payment company, Triple-A. This company provides crypto payment services for Trip.com. Public information shows that Triple-A is a licensed crypto payment institution headquartered in Singapore, primarily offering payment gateways and settlement services for cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

Additionally, I learned that Triple-A has also partnered with Singapore's internet giant Grab as a technical partner for crypto payment channels, allowing GrabPay users to directly use crypto assets to top up their wallet balances within the Grab app.

I also noticed a detail:

When booking hotels on Trip.com using USDT, there is no need to fill in detailed personal information; only a name and email are required to complete the order. This means that when using USDT for hotel payments, the platform can hardly obtain the user's complete privacy information. However, if purchasing flight tickets, nationality, passport number, phone number, and other information still need to be filled in—this is a compliance requirement of the aviation industry itself.

Privacy and data security have become significant issues in society.

Just this month, Ctrip Group faced a significant "public trust incident." In December, Ctrip Group signed a marketing cooperation agreement with the Cambodian National Tourism Board in Shanghai, which raised concerns among some users about local security, telecom fraud risks, and personal information safety, leading to a surge of screenshots showing users uninstalling the Ctrip app on social media.

In many overseas regions, users are far more sensitive to privacy and information security than in the domestic market. This may also be one of the important practical backgrounds for Trip.com to promote stablecoin payments.

For travelers worldwide without international credit cards, stablecoin payments offer a new path. According to public information, there are approximately 125 to 130 million people globally with credit cards, and even fewer with international credit cards, which means over 80% of the global population cannot smoothly use the international credit card system.

Credit cards are not merely "payment tools," but gateways to a credit system; however, most people globally do not belong to this system. In many countries and regions, such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and India, many people cannot be included in the credit system, which also prevents them from having credit cards.

Stablecoin payments are providing these individuals with a global payment path that bypasses the credit system.

Of course, the practical issues of stablecoins still exist: transaction fees remain relatively high and unstable.

During the payment process, I found significant differences in transaction fees among different wallets. When paying with USDT through Binance to Trip.com’s USDT payment code, a fee of 1 USDT is required, with a minimum transfer threshold of 10 USDT; while using Bitget Wallet for payment, the first transaction showed a fee of 0, and the second showed a fee of 2.39 USDT, with no minimum transfer amount set. The related differences may be due to the different public chains (Tron) and their fee mechanisms used.

Why Are Giants Entering the Stablecoin Space?

Ctrip Group is not the first company to enter the stablecoin arena.

Previously, many global internet and payment giants have clearly laid out their plans for stablecoins, including Ant Group, JD Group, PayPal, Stripe, Meta (Facebook), Grab, and TADA.

Several banking giants have also publicly stated their entry into the stablecoin field, such as Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Some physical manufacturing companies are also integrating stablecoin payments; reports indicate that some BYD dealers in Bolivia have supported USDT payments; manufacturing companies like Toyota and Yamaha are also accepting stablecoin settlements in overseas markets. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has publicly confirmed this.

BYD dealer's advertisement collaborating with USDT

Internet giants, physical manufacturing giants, and banking giants are all laying out their plans for stablecoins… Their use cases for stablecoins vary.

A clear trend is that payment giants like PayPal and Ant Group are no longer satisfied with merely being payment gateways for stablecoins; they hope to directly become issuers of stablecoins. PayPal has already launched PYUSD; Ant Group is also advancing its application for a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin license, reshaping the boundaries between payment institutions and currency issuance.

For physical manufacturing companies like BYD and Toyota, there is no ideological judgment regarding stablecoins or crypto payments; there is only one practical question: what method makes users more willing to spend money.

Continuous Devaluation of Fiat Currency, Stablecoins Become a "Practical Solution"

In Bolivia, the official currency, the Boliviano (BOB), is expected to depreciate by 65% to 137% against the US dollar from the end of 2024 to mid-2025, meaning that Bolivia's legal tender is depreciating every day.

In this environment, no outbound enterprise can long endure the exchange losses brought by local currency settlements, and USDT is gradually becoming the de facto payment tool locally.

And Bolivia is not an isolated case; it is a phenomenon occurring simultaneously in many countries worldwide.

This year, I traveled to Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and other countries, discovering that the local currencies of these economies have generally depreciated by over 80% against the US dollar in the past three years; extending to a five-year period, the currencies of Iran, Turkey, and Egypt have depreciated by over 200% against the US dollar.

Currency devaluation is evolving from a "localized risk" in a few countries to a broader, more structural global phenomenon.

In the black market of Tehran, Iran, I am witnessing a currency transaction

What’s more brutal is that in the aforementioned countries, the speed of local currency devaluation has long exceeded the income growth rate of ordinary people. In real transactions, currency disorder is directly changing people's payment methods.

This is precisely why consumer internet platforms like Trip.com and Grab; payment giants like PayPal and Ant Group; and physical manufacturing companies like BYD and Toyota are beginning to experiment with introducing USDT and other stablecoins in different markets.

The world is experiencing localized collapse, with some regions losing balance first.

When the existing financial system can no longer bear the functions of stability, settlement, and trust, a new economic system is being pushed to the forefront by reality.

The new economic system is not designed; it is "forced" out in places where the old system has failed. The spread of stablecoins is not because they are ideal enough, but because in certain places, they have become the least bad choice available.