Aus PM Morrison loses control of WeChat Chinese account as election looms

 Australia’s two major political parties have used the social media platform to communicate with Australian voters of Chinese ethnicity in tightly fought electorates since 2019

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison‘s Liberal Party lost access to his official WeChat social media account months ago, politicians said on Monday, issuing claims of censorship, while the still-active account being run by an unidentified controller now promotes Chinese life in Australia.

Amid growing diplomatic tensions with China, Australia’s two major political parties have used the social media platform, owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, to communicate with Australian voters of Chinese ethnicity in tightly fought electorates since 2019. With a national election due by May, the government would have aimed to use the Morrison account to promote its policies during the Chinese New Year celebrations starting Feb. 1. The prime minister’s office has made multiple fruitless requests to WeChat to regain access to the account, most recently on Jan 10, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Cash may be king in India, but Google is prince of mobile payments

The company has one of its fastest-growing hits ever with Google Pay, a two-year-old app that millions of consumers are using to spend and transfer tens of billions of dollars

The leading player in the battle for mobile payments in India isn’t either of China’s pioneers, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. orTencent Holdings Ltd. It isn’t Apple Inc, Visa Inc or even PayPal Holdings Inc.

It’s Google.

The Alphabet Inc unit has for years tried to diversify its revenues beyond advertising by pushing into new fields like cloud computing and hardware. While its profits remain healthy, it needs new ways to make money as the specter of regulation looms at home and around the globe. Its booming new business in the world’s largest untapped digital market could be the engine of expansion that it has been looking for.

In India today, the company has one of its fastest-growing hits ever with Google Pay, a two-year-old app that millions of consumers are using to spend and transfer tens of billions of dollars. Resembling a chat app and available in local languages, Google Pay was the most downloaded financial technology app world-wide last year, according to SensorTower, a research and marketing firm for the app industry.

Indian consumers use it to buy train tickets, pay bills and even to purchase lunchtime meals from street vendors. Tiny mom-and-pop shops around the country now display a logo with a large “G” and Google’s blue, red, yellow and green colors, signaling that merchants accept payments via the app, which is free for all to use.