US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday banning transactions with eight Chinese applications, including WeChat Pay and AliPay (via Reuters).
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The order bans all US transactions with the companies behind the applications, whose full list includes Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay and WPS Office.
The order assigns the Department of Commerce to define which transactions will be banned under the directive within 45 days, but a US official said Reuters that the Commerce Department intends to act before January 20, when Trump leaves office.
“By accessing personal electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablets and computers, Chinese connected software applications can access and capture a wealth of information from users, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information,” the executive said. .
Such data collection “would allow China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors and create files with personal information,” the document added.
The named apps are extremely popular among Chinese mobile device users, and if the order were successful, the bans would be a significant blow to Chinese Americans who use apps like WeChat to communicate.
The new orders are in addition to the two previous ones signed by Trump in August, which tried to ban transactions with WeChat and TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. The first order was blocked by a judge in September and then again in October, while a preliminary order issued by another judge in December prevented the TikTok ban from continuing.
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