Share this article
WeChat, Alipay to Block Crypto Transactions on Payment Platforms
WeChat Pay and Alipay are scrambling to keep up with regulators after recent announcements regarding initial coin offerings and cryptocurrencies.
By Muyao Shen
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 8:19 a.m. Published Aug 24, 2018, 7:29 p.m.
Chinese mobile payment platforms WeChat Pay and Alipay are scrambling to keep up with regulators after recent announcements regarding initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrencies.
Both payment giants have said that they will work with the government agencies closely to monitor cryptocurrency transactions, according to news releases on August 24.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
As CoinDesk reported on Friday, five high-level regulatory agencies in China – including the People's Bank of China and the Banking Regulatory Commission – issued a warning against any cryptocurrency-related fundraising and trading activities.
In a release published by Tencent, the parent company of WeChat Pay, not long after the news came out, the company said that it has come up with three main measures to regulate any "problematic" platforms related to ICOs and cryptocurrencies.
Specifically, the tech giant said that it will prohibit users from using WeChat payments to make any virtual currency-related transactions. Moreover, it will conduct both real-time monitoring of daily transactions and risk assessment of any suspicious transactions.
At the same time, in an exclusive interview with BJ News, a local news outlet based in Beijing, Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial, which owns Alipay, said that depending on the situation, it will restrict or permanently ban any personal Alipay accounts that are involved in cryptocurrency transactions.
Image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
LUNC Surges Over 160% in a Week as Do Kwon Sentencing and Token Burns Draw Traders
The rally is driven by speculation that a final verdict could bring clarity to the project, as well as technical factors like token burns.
What to know:
- Terra Classic (LUNC) surged 74% to $0.0000072, up 160% in the past week, on exploding trading volume, ahead of Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon's sentencing on Dec. 11.
- The rally is driven by speculation that a final verdict could bring clarity to the project, as well as technical factors like token burns, with 849 million LUNC destroyed in the past week.
- The token's momentum is also fueled by Binance's pause on LUNC withdrawals ahead of the Terra Chain's v2.18 upgrade, which aims to improve network stability, despite the token remaining volatile.
Top Stories
