
WeChat Pay is linked to users’ Chinese bank accounts and/or Visa, MasterCard, or JCB cards. To attract the over 3 million Chinese tourists that visit the United States yearly or the growing population of cross-border shoppers from China, merchants need to accept WeChat Pay. Both consumers and merchants appreciate the security and ease of use. WeChat Pay is used daily by Chinese citizens domestically and abroad, with over 800 million monthly active users. Even as they look to grow internationally, the emphasis has been on enabling merchants to accept WeChat Pay from Chinese tourists and cross-border e-commerce shoppers on a global scale. In contrast to American tech behemoths like Facebook and even other Chinese companies like TikTok, WeChat’s growth strategy is focused on domestic users. WeChat Pay has payment options for a number of different in-store and online scenarios, and along with Alipay, it’s one of the top mobile payment systems in China. It allows users to quickly make payments with their smartphones wherever they are and leave their physical wallets at home. While the fact that this feature is part of the larger WeChat app is unique, the overall digital wallet concept is similar to that of Apple Pay and Google Pay. WeChat Pay is a payment feature that is integrated within the WeChat app. This means there is no current ban on the use of WeChat Pay in the United States. Due to courts blocking the orders, they never took effect.Įarlier this year, current President Joe Biden withdrew these executive orders from his predecessor, although he did order a new commerce department review of WeChat and other Chinese apps to investigate any potential security concerns. In August 2020, former President Donald Trump issued controversial executive orders that attempted to block new users from downloading certain Chinese-owned apps like WeChat and TikTok, and also prevent the processing of WeChat Pay transactions for US citizens. So how does WeChat Pay work? And why should businesses based in the US offer WeChat Pay at checkout? WeChat Pay Ban: Where Things Stand Nowīefore we go over the nuts and bolts of WeChat Pay, you may have heard that WeChat and WeChat Pay were banned in the United States. In terms of reach, WeChat is comparable to Facebook, with 1.25 billion monthly active users as of 2021, and their digital wallet is similarly popular with Chinese consumers.

WeChat Pay is the mobile payment method founded by Chinese tech giant WeChat.
