After Alibaba, Tencent Could Attract Regulatory Penalty

The People’s Bank of China discovered Tencent Holdings Ltd TCEHY is guilty of violating some central bank regulations by its WeChat Pay mobile network, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Regulators could subject Tencent to a penalty worth at least hundreds of millions of yuan.
The central bank’s routine inspection of 2021 found WeChat Pay flouting China’s anti-money-laundering rules and had lapses in compliance with “know your customer” and “know your business” regulations.
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The regulations require it to verify the identities of users and merchants transacting on its platform and the source of funds for those transactions.
WeChat Pay also allegedly allowed the transfer and laundering of funds with illicit transactions like gambling.
For WeChat Pay, “know your customer” and “know your business” procedures mean it must verify the identities of users and merchants transacting on its platform and the source of funds for those transactions.
WeChat has 1.26 billion monthly active users, most of them in China.
Price Action: TCEHY traded lower by 6.98% at $41.64 on Monday.