Asia

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?

Square Inc.'s addition of mobile chip-and-PIN in the U.K. and Australia markets is setting a precedent that some in the U.S. are loath to follow.

An Australian company is introducing its own version of bitcoin that will let homeowners and businesses sell excess energy generated from their rooftop solar panels to neighbors, without a middleman taking a cut.

Uber India this week announced its integration with Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the mobile payments technology developed by the government-sanctioned National Payments Corporation of India and two local banks, expanding mobile payments access to Uber riders and drivers.

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