WeChat, a Chinese social media giant and payment service provider bans cryptocurrency transactions in its payments policy. The founding partner of crypto investment firm Primitive, Dovey Wan, tweeted the news on May 7.
Urgh, Wechat just updated its payment policy .. merchant can’t serve any token issuance/fund raising or crypto trading activities, otherwise account will be terminated
Given most OTC transactions are happening in wechat, this may impact local liquidity to quite some extent pic.twitter.com/TdNIO6cggS
— Dovey "Rug the fiat" Wan (hiring) (@DoveyWan) May 7, 2019
As per the screenshot shared in a tweet, WeChat updated their policy, that users who engage in cryptocurrency trading will have their accounts terminated. Wan has expressed concern that with most over-the-counter transactions are happening in WeChat, “this may impact local liquidity to quite some extent.”
A popular messaging and payments service provider in China, WeChat also features game integrations. The updated rule from the platform states that “merchants may not engage in illegal transactions such as virtual currency,” the issuance of tokens, selling pornography or online gambling and will come into force on May 31.
The founder and CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, chipped in his thoughts on the matter with a Tweet. Wherein, Zhao asserts that the restrictions have been forced on the company. He further defines this development as “a classic example of short term pain, long term gain.”
He also went on to note in another Tweet that, it would be hard to beat the user experience offered by the WeChat payment services if it wasn’t for such restrictions.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1125699545654906880
Reportedly, WeChat Pay registers a total daily transaction volume of over 1 billion (currency unspecified), while the overall number of users allegedly reached 1.098 billion by the end of last year. As per the technology news outlet TechNode, the app is also popular among older people, with 98.5% of Chinese people aged between 50 and 80 WeChat users.
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