Republican senators want to prohibit US app stores such as Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments in China’s digital currency, citing concerns that the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans.
Companies that own or control app stores, according to the bill, “shall not carry or support any app in [their] app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY.” Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Mike Braun are the bill’s sponsors.
According to Cotton’s office, the digital Yuan could give the Chinese government “real-time visibility into all network transactions, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join this network.”
In a January 2021 report, the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, DC-based think tank, stated that China’s digital currency and electronic payments system was “likely to be a boon for CCP surveillance in the economy and government interference in the lives of Chinese citizens,” noting that “transactions will contain precise data about users and their financial activity.”
The move comes after WeChat, a messaging and payment app owned by China’s Tencent with over 1.2 billion users, announced earlier this year that it would begin supporting the currency.
Alipay, Jack Ma’s Ant Group’s massively popular payment app, also accepts digital currency. Both apps are available for download from the Apple and Google app stores.
Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google, Ant Group, and Tencent all declined to comment.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington described the legislation as “another example of the United States wantonly bullying foreign companies by abusing state power on the untenable ground of national security.”
While preventing potential national security threats from China is a rare point of bipartisan agreement in the deeply divided US Congress, the bill’s passage ahead of the midterm elections is uncertain.
To read our blog on “Residents of 3 Chinese cities pay taxes and fees in digital Yuan,” click here.
