The original version of the app was created by Allen Zhang, named 'Weixin' ( 微信) by Pony Ma, and launched in 2011. WeChat began as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010. Recognizing smart phones were likely to disrupt this status quo, CEO Pony Ma sought to proactively invest in alternatives to their own QQ messenger app. History īy 2010, Tencent had already attained a massive user base with their desktop messenger app QQ. Joe Biden officially dropped Trump's efforts to ban WeChat in the U.S.

'transactions' with WeChat through an executive order but was blocked by a preliminary injunction issued in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in September 2020.

president Donald Trump sought to ban U.S. In response to a border dispute between India and China, WeChat was banned in India in June 2020 along with several other Chinese apps, including TikTok. Any interactions between Weixin and WeChat users are subject to the terms of service and privacy policies of both services. Chinese-registered Weixin accounts censor politically sensitive topics. User activity on Weixin, the Chinese version of the app, is analyzed, tracked and shared with Chinese authorities upon request as part of the mass surveillance network in China. Non-Chinese numbers are registered under WeChat, and WeChat users are subject to a different, less strict terms of service and stricter privacy policy, and their data is stored in the Netherlands for users in the European Union, and in Singapore for other users. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.Īccounts registered using Chinese phone numbers are managed under the Weixin brand, and their data is stored in mainland China and subject to Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy, which forbids content which 'endanger national security, divulge state secrets, subvert state power and undermine national unity'. WeChat has been described as China's 'app for everything' and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ( Chinese: 微信 pinyin: Wēixìn ( listen i) lit. On similar lines, sometime back, Indonesia’s central bank also announced plans to launch a digital currency to ‘fight’ private cryptocurrencies.Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish Which in turn, creates a level playing field for new payment providers, as per the professor. Instead, to “provide a payment infrastructure that then provides interoperability for any payment provider, who wants to use that payment network.” Therefore, going forward, Prasad explained that the idea to set up a CBDC should not be to directly compete with these payment providers. “I think there is a concern that these two major payment providers have dominated the payment space…now control massive flows of data.” Meanwhile, McKinsey also reported that e-CNY saw moderate adoption as WeChat Pay and Alipay remain popular options. “PBOC is trying to create a digital currency that competes with these payment providers, for the use case for a CBDC I think, it’s actually pretty weak in China.” When a comparable volume for the digital yuan was achieved in 18 months. It is also noteworthy that Alibaba is a huge platform that attracted a sales figure close to $85 billion in just around 11 days. And also to make sure that the payment space is not dominated by two payment providers.”Īs per a recent WSJ report, e-CNY is not offered on platforms by e-commerce giant Alibaba. “The People’s Bank of China wants to make sure that a digital version of the yuan is relevant, in terms of making sure that central bank money remains tractable at the retail level.

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