PayPal wins the race to enter China

US digital money transfer platform PayPal has become China's first foreign-owned third-party payment platform after acquiring the mainland GoPay, the Global Times newspaper reported yesterday.

Paypal's move comes as mainland giants such as Ant Financial are facing a crackdown over monopolistic practices.

PayPal Information Technology's (Shanghai) equity stake in GoPay increased from 70 to 100 percent after Cofortune Information Technology gave up its 30 percent stake, the newspaper reports, citing data from Tianyancha - a company information website.

Headquartered in Beijing, GoPay was founded in 2011 and owns licenses for mobile, online and cross-border yuan payment services.

US payment and credit card firms have been vying to enter the Chinese market after China's central bank opened the market to foreign third-party digital payment firms.

Meanwhile, a group of California WeChat users sued Tencent (0700) for allegedly violating their right to privacy by surveilling and censoring their communications.

Citizen Power Initiatives for China, a group promoting transition to Democracy in China, and six anonymous app users said comments made using WeChat that can be perceived as critical of the Chinese government have led to the users' accounts being frozen, causing them to be cut off from friends and relatives in China as well as their business clients in the U.S.

One of the anonymous plaintiffs, a practitioner of traditional Chinese massage, said his WeChat account was frozen for 42 days after he made a comment about the pandemic last year, and he lost about US$500 (HK$3,900) a day as unable to communicate with his clients.