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WeChat will reportedly join AliPay in supporting the People's Bank of China e-CNY pilot. Payments can be made through WeChat Pay by scanning a QR code once an account on Tencent's digital bank WeBank is opened. WeChat has added a "digital yuan" option on its WeChat Pay page and a "payment with e-yuan" option on the "receipt and payment" page. Teaming up with WeChat means there are potentially more than 1 billion users who could use the digital currency.

WeChat has reportedly added China's central bank digital currency (CBDC) to some of its payment services, following rival Alipay in offering support for the digital yuan since December 2022. WeChat Pay now allows digital yuan payments on certain apps, such as ordering food from McDonald's and paying bills. Direct CBDC transactions between WeChat users are expected to follow.

AntGroup's Alipay added a feature that permits its users to transfer sums to WeChat users, bridging the two Chinese digital payments providers.  To perform a transfer, Alipay users first need to select the payment amount they would like to transfer. After that, the app generates a QR code that can be shared with counterparties via WeChat, QQ, Sina Weibo, or DingDing. The move follows the launch of anti-trust measures by the Chinese central government targeting the two payment platforms, as well as practices such as exclusive agreements with vendors and the use of big data to engage in discriminatory pricing.

WeChat can now open digital yuan wallets by registering through Tencent-backed WeBank, so they can make payments and transfer money digital yuan directly within WeChat. The expanded feature comes after the People's Bank of China (PBoC) recently expanded the e-CNY pilot areas to 23 cities and special zones.

Binance is set to add two more channels to its fiat gateway - WeChat and Alipay, allowing users in China to buy bitcoin with the two payment options.

Alipay has declared that it will be banning any transactions related to any cryptocurrencies. This follow's Binance's announcement that it is accepting fiat currencies through Alipay and WeChat, although the exchange is not working directly with WeChat or Alipay.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC's) main motivation for issuing a digital renminbi is to create a government-controlled alternative to two very large and loosely regulated digital payment platforms, Alipay and WeChat Pay. The ubiquity of Alipay and WeChat Pay raises the specter of the Chinese authorities losing control of payment flows through the economy. The American government has no analogous worries that justify the Fed issuing a digital dollar.

The digital yuan is entering an already very crowded payments market in China, with smartphone apps WeChat Pay and Alipay already dominating the electronic payments sector. Businesses reported minimal differences in processing payments with the e-yuan compared to existing mobile payment products, although they did note that it does not cost them an additional service free unlike both WeChat Pay and Alipay. Also, payments via the digital yuan can be made without connecting to the internet.

China's State Council Information Office, prompted by the Peoples's Bank of China (PBOC), is reportedly looking at whether to launch an anti-trust probe into Alipay and WeChat Pay, The State Council's antitrust committee has been gathering information on them for more than a month. But authorities have been keen to whittle back their dominance. Also, in an effort to encourage smaller players to enter the market, the PBOC said last year that it planned to standardize the interoperability of QR code payments.

China's WeChat Pay has told its users that it will be giving them a credit rating, called "Payment Points." The system leverages artificial intelligence and uses users' data collected from the platform including personal and credit records, spending habits and other factors to determine a user's "credibility." Tencent hopes the system will be adopted by small commercial institutions including banks for personal credit evaluation.

Messaging has taken a different path in China. WeChat, which has over a billion users and is owned by Asia's largest technology firm by value, Tencent, is more than just a messaging app. It's what some analysts dub a "super-app" because it offers everything from mobile payments to the ability to book flights and even play games - all without leaving the app.

Xie Ping, a former People's Bank of China (PBOC) research director, made critical public comments about China's central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference. After launching in 2020, e-CNY transactions hit $88 billion yuan ($12 billion) at the end of 2021, after which growth slowed down significantly, only crossing the $100 billion yuan threshold at the end of August 2022. Ping said existing digital retail payment platforms such as AliPay and WeChat Pay "have formed a payment market structure that have met needs for daily consumption". Hence,  the e-CNY use case needs to expand from its current use as a cash substitute and opened to other uses such as the ability to pay for financial products or connected to more payment platforms to boost adoption. https://finance.caixin.com/2022-12-28/101982996.html

Simply put, the Libra Masterplan is borrowing pages from the Bitcoin playbook and the WeChat playbook both at once. If successful, it makes the Libra accessible to everyone on the planet while offloading the regulatory burden of operating the on- and off-ramps to other business.

Changchun Mu, new head of the PBOC's Digital Currency Research Institute. He has said that China's CBDC will be supported across major e-payments platforms such as WeChat and Alipay.

Screenshots of what appear to be China's upcoming digital yuan flooded WeChat today. It appears to be part of a trial being conducted by a half dozen banks, including the Agricultural Bank of China, in Shenzhen, Xiongan, Chengdu, and Suzhou.

China's latest central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot doubles down on the previous pilot, nudging merchants and consumers to embrace e-yuan. First the new system is easy to set up and use. Merchants simply download and app to their smartphones and connect the app to their bank accounts. Then they display a QR code that customers scan to make paymants. Or, merchants can use point-of-sale machines that are updated to be compatible with the e-yuan. Either way, payments via e-yuan go directly into the merchant's bank account without any fees nor commission, while WeChat Pay or Alipay charge a fee when withdrawing from the accounts. Also, payments can be made even without an internet connection. In addition, users are compelled to use the new currency because spending in e-yuan is connected with their social credit system scores.

According to the World Bank, Latin America's formal remittance market is around $96 billion. But traditional services like Moneygram or Western Union can come with high commissions, unfavorable exchange rates, limited office hours, long transmission times and daily exchange limits. Crypto remittances are a different story. For example, money can be sent from Venezuela to family members in Colombia and Spain using the peer-to-peer platform LocalBitcoins. These transactions are often faster and cheaper than their traditional finance counterparts, with fewer steps to send money. Crypto remittances organized on messaging platforms like Whatsapp, Telegram and WeChat can be even more competitive.

The new Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) e-CNY app has scored a 4.4 out of 5 in China's Apple App Store, and Richard Turrin, in his review, concurs. If the e-CNY is going to be accepted it's got to bring something to the table in addition to what's offered by Alipay and WeChat Pay, and Richard runs through the major new features that will be important enough that they'll get some to change. These include: -Unlimited spending limits for e-CNY wallets that fulfill the highest level of know-your-customer (KYC), versus Alipay personal accounts that top out around RMB 20,000 (about $3,000). -The ability to set spending limits not just on the entire account but on all of the sub-wallets, a money management feature that the other payment platforms don't have. -Payments of less than RMB 2000 ($300) are anonymous! There is no equivalent for the other payment platforms or even western credit cards.

Changshu city will reportedly start paying civil servants and people who work for public institutions with e-CNY central bank digital currency (CBDC) starting in May 2023. The move marks a major step to promote the use of the digital currency, in the face of many hurdles, including its limited use cases, and the public's preference for popular digital payment platforms such as WeChat Pay and Alipay.

The IMF published a paper that synthesizes four lessons from the experiences of six Asian e-money schemes (Alipay and WeChat Pay in China; Paytm in India; and GoPay, GrabPay, and ShopeePay in Southeast Asia) for central banks as they consider CBDC issuance: CBDC should embody trust, convenience, efficiency, and security; CBDC service providers can facilitate adoption by leveraging digital technology, targeting use cases, developing business models, and complying with legal and regulatory requirements; central banks could incentivize CBDC service providers to develop these four channels when considering CBDC adoption; and central banks may be able to establish data-sharing arrangements that preserve privacy while leaving room for CBDC service providers to explore the economic value of data.