Caixin Explains: What China’s New Payment Rules Mean for Alipay, WeChat Pay

There’s no shortage of folksy sayings that warn about the danger of mixing business and personal matters, and that’s the message China’s financial regulators want the hundreds of millions of users of mobile payment platforms like Alipay and WeChat Pay to take to heart.

New regulations released by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) in October bar businesses from using barcodes generated by personal accounts on these platforms to take money from their customers. Instead, the central bank wants all businesses to use more tightly regulated accounts that feature merchant barcodes, which the platforms use to facilitate transactions between businesses and their customers.