1/1/2023 0 Comments Wechat in usa![]() ![]() The gambling and tourism conglomerate Caesars Entertainment began taking WeChat payments at restaurants, shops and entertainment venues in Las Vegas, aiming to help Chinese tourists spend their money.īut with US-based rivals like Zelle, Venmo and Apple Pay contesting the market, WeChat barely registered, and Caesars appears to have given it up. In 2018 the company declared its WeChat Pay app was poised to take off, especially in brand-name shops where Chinese tourists abound, hoping to leverage that for a broader expansion. WeChat did once try to break into the US payments market, but made few inroads due to resistance by banks and merchants, regulations that favor credit and debit cards over digital wallets, and stiff competition. Reinsch said US businesses were mainly concerned that the long-flagged crackdown would apply to use of WeChat outside the United States, which would hamstring their China businesses. Now, under the Commerce Department order, WeChat cannot be used for transferring money inside the United States. If US businesses do use its payments function, said Reinsch, "I haven't heard of anybody complaining that they might be stopped from doing that." US businesses also use WeChat for communications with Chinese suppliers, and can possibly use it for payments, though other services-like the Alipay function of TenCent rival Alibaba-are better built to handle large sums and foreign exchange. He said that it can be used to exchange small amounts of money.īut it cannot be connected to a US bank account or credit or debit card, and because it only works in Chinese yuan. That includes several hundred thousand Chinese students in the US, who use it for "at least 90 percent" of their daily online conversations, according to Wu. "It's mostly used by Chinese visiting or working here or by Chinese-Americans staying in touch with their relatives," said William Reinsch of the Center for Strategic and international Studies in Washington. Owned by technology giant TenCent, WeChat in the United States has around 19 million active daily users, said Adam Blacker of Apptopia, a mobile apps consultant. ![]() It is a kind of universal app, a digital bank account and identification card, for ordering food or a car, sending gifts, managing medical issues, and interfacing government services. In China, WeChat took the country toward cashless commerce in just a few years, and it is used by hundreds of millions for everyday payments. "They are slowing the speed to technically make it virtually impossible to use audio, video, or send images," said Wu Ziyi, a Chinese graduate student in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The order will slow down WeChat to make it unuseable in the United States for videochats with family and friends. The US Commerce Department announced partial bans on Friday on WeChat as well as video app TikTok. ![]() But the app had not managed to reproduce in the US its success in China as the dominant smartphone-based payments platform. ![]()
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