Story continues Market forces or the wishes of regulators? If CUP were to gain 20% or 30% market share, Alipay and WeChat Pay's own valuations could suffer. Given that WeChat Pay's mobile payment market share is 38.9% (versus Alipay's 53.8% at the end of 2018), Tencent's mobile payment app is also likely worth tens of billions. Assuming that Alibaba owns around 30% of Ant Financial now, the e-commerce company's mobile payment stake alone is worth around US$45 billion. Alibaba owned 33% of Alipay's parent Ant Financial before it raised another US$14 billion at an estimated US$150 billion valuation in 2018.
If CUP were to gain significant market share, it could spell trouble for the stock prices of Alibaba and Tencent. The question is can CUP achieve its goal? Tens of billions at stake for Alibaba and Tencent The company hopes to reach over 400 million registered users in 2020. Its mobile payments app QuickPass is growing as the total number of registered users have increased to 160 million from 100 million at the end of November. Congress, prospects for the bill's passage ahead of midterm elections are uncertain.Understandably, CUP wants to regain some of its lost ground and be the third player in China's lucrative mobile payments sector. While stopping potential national security threats related to China is a rare point of bipartisan agreement in the deeply divided U.S. The Chinese Embassy in Washington called the legislation "another example of the United States wantonly bullying foreign companies by abusing state power on the untenable ground of national security." Both apps are available in the Apple and Google App stores.Īpple Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, Ant Group and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment. Alipay, the hugely popular payments app owned by Jack Ma's Ant Group, also accepts the digital currency. The move comes after WeChat, a messaging and payment application owned by China's Tencent with over 1.2 billion users, announced it would begin supporting the currency earlier this year. The Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said in a January 2021 report that China's digital currency and electronic payments system was "likely to be a boon for CCP surveillance in the economy and for government interference in the lives of Chinese citizens," noting that "transactions will contain precise data about users and their financial activity." The bill, unveiled Thursday and first reported by Reuters, states that companies that own or control app stores "shall not carry or support any app in app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY." It is sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Braun.Īccording to Cotton's office, digital yuan could provide the Chinese government with "real-time visibility into all transactions on the network, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join this network." app stores including Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments to be made with China's digital currency, amid fears the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans. WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican senators want to bar U.S.