TikTok’s Parent ByteDance Pushes Into Payments With Help From J.P. Morgan

One of America’s most powerful banks is quietly building financial tools for ByteDance products like TikTok, expanding China’s grip on the high stakes payments space.

J.P. Morgan has been quietly working with TikTok parent ByteDance on payments technology that is helping the Chinese giant expand into more than two dozen markets and reach millions more users. The partnership is just one piece of ByteDance’s broader push into the fintech space.

TikTok is a sprawling marketplace: An enormous amount of money moves across the platform each day as people buy coins to send virtual gifts (like diamonds and roses) to their favorite creators and others they meet through the app, who can then convert those items into cash. Users around the world spent $3.4 billion on TikTok in 2022, up from $2 billion the previous year, and spending in the U.S. alone more than tripled—to $670 million—from the year before, according to data analytics firm Sensor Tower.