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investors from taking stakes in the firm. technology deals a blow to companies like Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, which was added in May 2019, its impact on a fintech giant like Ant Group is likely to be more symbolic and does not prevent U.S. firms to sell high-tech items to blacklisted companies, has become the tool of choice for the Trump administration to punish Chinese companies, though its real-world impact is sometimes questionable.
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The entity list, which makes it more difficult for U.S. Ant, an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, declined to comment but in a recent statement to Reuters emphasized that only 5% of the company’s business is outside China. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. users.Ī powerful security panel known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) stopped its $1.2 billion bid to buy the money transfer company Moneygram in 2018 over national security risks.
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Congress, prospects for the bill's passage ahead of midterm elections are uncertain.While the Alipay payment app is currently unavailable for American users in the United States, according to a spokesperson for Ant, Trump administration officials fear the Chinese government could access sensitive banking data belonging to future U.S. While stopping potential national security threats related to China is a rare point of bipartisan agreement in the deeply divided U.S. The Chinese Embassy in Washington called the legislation "another example of the United States wantonly bullying foreign companies by abusing state power on the untenable ground of national security." Both apps are available in the Apple and Google App stores.Īpple Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, Ant Group and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment. Alipay, the hugely popular payments app owned by Jack Ma's Ant Group, also accepts the digital currency. The move comes after WeChat, a messaging and payment application owned by China's Tencent with over 1.2 billion users, announced it would begin supporting the currency earlier this year. The Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said in a January 2021 report that China's digital currency and electronic payments system was "likely to be a boon for CCP surveillance in the economy and for government interference in the lives of Chinese citizens," noting that "transactions will contain precise data about users and their financial activity."
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The bill, unveiled Thursday and first reported by Reuters, states that companies that own or control app stores "shall not carry or support any app in app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY." It is sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Braun.Īccording to Cotton's office, digital yuan could provide the Chinese government with "real-time visibility into all transactions on the network, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join this network." app stores including Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments to be made with China's digital currency, amid fears the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans. WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican senators want to bar U.S.
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