China

NetEase Inc., China’s second-largest video game publisher, is deepening a push into e-commerce with plans to increase spending on products from the U.S., Europe and Japan to sell to local consumers.

A rising tide of Chinese dealmaking in the U.S. is spurring Congress to propose tighter measures to restrict investments that are increasingly viewed as a threat to America’s national security.

Meituan Dianping, China’s largest group-buying and restaurant reviews service, is said to be close to finalizing a deal to raise at least $3 billion from investors including Capital Group, according to people familiar with the matter.

New policies in China and Hong Kong may be a way to clear the path for those issuers that wish to launch legally compliant and responsible token sales, writes Joshua Ashley Klayman, an attorney at Morrison Foerster.

Alipay has entered agreements with Nordic trade and tourism institutions to further enable merchants in that region to accept payments from Chinese customers through Alipay's in-app marketing program.

China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges raises questions about the future of digital asset innovation, a movement that some bankers view as a threat and others embrace as a boon to payments, P-to-P lending and other activities.

The preparations underscore the trouble Chinese buyers face in persuading the panel that investigates foreign acquisitions to greenlight takeovers.

HSBC has been implementing biometric techniques for customer authentication, including voice recognition and Touch ID.

Alipay and WeChat Pay will force traditional payment networks to up their game, particularly in in-play emerging markets. Whether they can become relevant at scale for consumers outside China remains to be seen, writes Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

China plans to ban trading of bitcoin and other virtual currencies on domestic exchanges, dealing another blow to the $150 billion cryptocurrency market after the country outlawed initial coin offerings last week.

The cross-border payments specialist has developed a workaround to comply with a format that requires Chinese characters for certain transactions.

China's Metaverse Foundation collaborated with Russian crypto investment bank CyberTrust to create the Cryptocurrency Fund to support ICO projects from China and Russia through KICKICO's crypto crowdfunding platform.

Payments startup UTRUST is calling its first step in building a bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments platform with consumer protections a huge success, despite events working against its industry in China.

With a blanket ban on initial coin offerings, China has sidestepped an issue plaguing regulators worldwide: are such tokens securities?

Chinese tourists visiting Malaysia can now use their Alipay mobile wallet at all 242 Starbucks locations in the country.

Payments are getting more complex as business gets more global, adding channels and expanding ways to sell. Part of the strategy at the matchmaker crowdSPRING is to find a match of its own: AliExpress, Alibaba's online marketplace. It’s also considering a foray into virtual currency.

The simple act of moving money can have a big impact on any political movement, so banks and payment networks are often caught up in issues of national importance. Here are some recent instances where payments and politics came head-to-head.

China's Alipay already has broad global reach—its mobile wallet is accepted at more than 100,000 retail locations in 70 international markets—but in North America it’s just getting started.

Alipay and WeChat Pay have become important drivers in the Chinese economy, putting the central bank in a position to force all third-party payment firms to connect to the new clearinghouse.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is launching a payments collection platform that helps users manage mobile wallets and card payments in China through an arrangement with China UnionPay Merchant Services.