The top social media platform in China, WeChat, has updated its policies to ban accounts that provide access to crypto or nonfungible token- (NFT)-related services. Under the new guidelines, accounts involved with the issuance, trading, and financing of crypto and NFTs will be either restricted or banned and will fall under the “illegal business” category. The policy also covers secondary NFT trading, with the firm noting that “accounts that provide services or content related to the secondary transaction of digital collections shall also be dealt with in accordance with this article.” The move was highlighted by Hong Kong-based crypto news …

Some of China’s largest state banks are actively promoting the digital yuan as a superior means of payment to the country’s two leading payment providers, Alipay and WeChat Pay. In a Monday report, Reuters revealed that six of China’s largest banks are promoting China’s nascent central bank-issued digital currency, or CBDC, in Shanghai ahead of an online shopping festival on May 5. The banks are urging retail outlets and consumers to download the digital wallet and make purchases using the CBDC, also known as e-CNY. This would bypass the current payment methods of choice for millions of shoppers, Ant Group’s …

China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, will provide backup for major retail payment services like AliPay and WeChat Pay as its key objective, according to an official at the People’s Bank of China. Mu Changchun, head of the People’s Bank of China’s digital currency research institute, claimed that China’s digital yuan is needed to ensure financial stability in case “something happens” to AliPay or WeChat Pay, the South China Morning Post reports. Speaking at an online panel discussion on Thursday, Mu stated that Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay account for 98% of the mobile payment market in China, …

For the past several years, the trade war between China and the U.S. has been at the center of international relations, with technology playing an outsized role. Within crypto, advancing interest in central bank digital currencies has become part of that narrative of geopolitical competition. Many have framed the development of CBDCs in China and the U.S. as a race — in which case, China is clearly closer to launch and, hence, the “winner.” But a race to the finish is a flawed paradigm, and one to which Cointelegraph has contributed its fair share. For the moment, China is actively …

The Jing’an District of Shanghai has started offering blockchain-based discount coupons. Local news outlet Shine reported that the district will issue the coupons using one of WeChat’s mini-programs operated by the Jing’an Culture and Tourism Bureau. WeChat mini-programs are smaller sub-applications built within the WeChat ecosystem to offer several online services like e-commerce, music and video streaming and translation. The tourism bureau has integrated blockchain to their WeChat mini-program to adjust the number of coupons in circulation and the validity period of each of these by analyzing how people are using them. The mini-program will send out new coupons daily. …

The People’s Bank of China is purportedly planning to use its digital currency electronic system (DCEP) — another moniker for its central bank digital currency — to target the dominance of technology giants like Alibaba and Tencent in the digital payments sector. The report comes only a few days after claims of the central bank prompting a top antitrust agency to launch a probe against Alipay and WeChat Pay for using their dominance to suppress competition. According to the Financial Times, even regulators and executives of Alibaba’s financial group Ant agreed that PBoC will target the market dominance of Alipay …

ByteDance, the Beijing-based multinational tech group behind TikTok, is looking into adding banking to its line of products and services. It is currently bidding for a digital bank license in Singapore, according to the Financial Times on Monday. Competition is stiff ByteDance is likely to compete with a few other Asian tech giants including Alibaba’s Ant Financial and electronic leader Xiaomi to obtain one of the five virtual banking licenses that the Monetary Authority of Singapore is about to issue later this year. The news reported, while citing sources familiar with the matter, that the company has applied for one …

On May 26, Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, a representative from the International Monetary Fund, stated that moving forward, the best way to harness the potential of central bank digital currencies would be by fostering synthetic partnerships between the private and public sectors. Further expounding his views on the matter, the deputy division chief of the IMF’s monetary capital and markets department stated that the vision behind CBDCs being completely under the control of a central bank is now an outdated one and that the entry of private players could help spur innovation. When asked about how such a partnership could even start …

A new kind of cryptocurrency tipbot allows users to pay others to answer their questions on social media, providing a new tool to pool data in the ecosystem. Liser Lee of CCTip told Cointelegraph that the system can help drive engagement or generate expert commentary. It lets users create a Twitter poll and automatically pay anyone who shares it with cryptocurrency, helping a poll gain more exposure and answers. The company is also considering a system pays the poll respondents instead. Other than Twitter, CCTip will also work on Telegram, Discord, WeChat and on Reddit as well. It supports 200 …

Billionaire Jack Ma, owner of payment app Alipay, seeks to lure 44 million merchants to expand services for the app’s 900 million users in everything from real estate purchases to restaurant and cinema bookings, according to a March 10 report by Bloomberg. Alipay is aiming to attract these merchants and service providers in China with mini programs — lite apps that sit on top of its interface and provide quick access to services. Coronavirus has boosted demand for online services Demand for online services has reportedly surged in China since the outbreak of Coronavirus in December. He Yongming, vice president …

The government of Hubei, the Chinese province at the epicenter of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, issued a report on Feb. 18 detailing measures taken against the disease. The officials revealed that they tracked both offline and online purchases of fever medicine to organize relief efforts. As the emergency situation shows no signs of slowing down, provincial officials have taken a set of measures to better control the outbreak. Pharmacies and medical institutions are now required to ask for valid ID from anyone purchasing fever medicine, presumably to treat the virus. In addition to newly enacted measures, the government began an …

The world’s largest diamond mining firm, Russia’s Alrosa, has partnered with Tencent, the operator of Chinese social media app WeChat, on a new blockchain-based e-commerce project. Together with blockchain platform Everledger, Tencent and Alrosa will launch a new diamond-focused retail mini-program targeted at WeChat’s one billion active users, according to a Dec. 16 press release. In a joint statement, the three firms said the program aims to improve transparency and consumer trust across the diamond supply chain, enabling social media users to purchase diamonds with full knowledge of their origin, characteristics and ownership history. Ethical credentials The three firms claim …