Merchants banned from crypto trading on WeChat
TenCent, the Chinese technology giant that owns the popular messaging platform “WeChat” has updated their payment policy as of 2019-04-30. The new policy bans all merchants using the platform to engage in cryptocurrency trading.
The Payment Service Protocol was updated on April 30th by WeChat. The new policy also stipulates that merchants cannot have any involvement with any form of virtual currency trading. This will result in an effective and immediate termination of the merchant’s account.
This new policy won’t be taken into effect until May 31st, 2019. At that time, WeChat will remove payment service abilities from merchant accounts. There is a slight loophole though as the policy doesn’t state crypto-related transactions in the new law. However, if this is fought in court, it would be quickly shut down by a Chinese judge.
This new policy might not just affect merchants who use the service, but it could have an impact on traders all across China. Luckily, there are other exchanges like OKEX and Huobi that allow for merchants to use crypto-currencies for trading. Additionally, this policy only affects those who have signed up for a merchant account or corporate account. Using a retail account will still give you the ability to trade crypto-currency; however, these currencies wouldn’t be trading legally.
Since August 2018, WeChat has been working on solutions that will help better monitor merchant accounts.