Buying Cryptocurrency With Mobile Payments in China Just Got a Lot Harder

August 30, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

Buying cryptocurrency these days can be a challenge. In some places, it’s just hard to know how to do it; it’s not like it’s very well-publicized. In other places, it’s outright illegal or close enough to it as makes little difference. China has been fighting the cryptocurrency wave quite extensively, and in the most recent development, both Alipay and WeChat Pay—China’s biggest mobile payments platforms—have both stepped up their enforcement against cryptocurrency purchases.

Both WeChat Pay and Alipay, reportedly, are working to monitor cryptocurrency transactions on their mobile wallet platforms following a more generalized crackdown against same from the Chinese government. Tencent—the folks behind WeChat Pay noted that it has already taken what it calls “remediation measures” to prevent the purchase or use of cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, Alipay’s parent company, Ant Financial, took to television where it noted that it also plans to take measures against cryptocurrency. Those who use or try to buy it may find their accounts restricted or even permanently shuttered.

It’s actually a bit surprising that the mobile payments tools would be so thoroughly on the Chinese government’s side on this one, especially as the Chinese government hasn’t exactly done these two companies any favors lately. Recent changes in banking rules has forced them to effectively hold all depositor cash in immediate reserve, thus limiting the amount of money they can make on same to whatever the prevailing interest rate is.

Seeing both Alipay and WeChat Pay move so enthusiastically in support of the Chinese government here makes me wonder what they were promised. Were they offered some relief in the relentless push to effectively wipe them out as options? Or were they simply promised that they could continue to exist? This is strictly speculative, of course, but it’s not hard to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes that would allow China to so tightly regulate an industry and yet receive its complete loyalty.

China’s increasingly totalitarian measures on the economic front don’t bode well, and it may be that the mobile payments concept will dry up and blow away under the bootheel of far too much regulation. Either way, though, it’s not looking good for cryptocurrency in China, and mobile payments aren’t looking all that bright either for much the same reason.