At the start of last week, Tencent introduced Mini Apps to its popular messenger app, WeChat. Some of these Mini Apps allowed for customers to make financial transactions, but now regulators at the Chinese Securities Regulator Commission (CSRC) have suspended these transactions citing security considerations.
Regarding the development, China Global Television Network said:
“The first batch of fund management companies to roll out Mini Apps included China Asset Management, Harvest Fund, China Southern Asset Management, GF Fund Management, Yinhua Fund Management and CCB Principal Asset Management...But only the Mini Apps of China Southern and Harvest Fund are still available, for the purpose of presenting their services and hyperlinks to online wealth management products.”
The newly introduced Mini Apps are downloadable in the WeChat app by searching for them, or by scanning QR codes. Each Mini App comes in at less than 1MB, smaller than the apps you find in traditional app stores. Tencent hopes to use WeChat’s dominance to reach iOS and Android users with its Mini Apps and try to pry people away from typical app stores.
The CSRC has told fund management companies that they should only use the Mini Apps service to display their products and that Mini Apps were only permitted to support URL redirection.
Source: CGTN