kathmandu nepals central bank has banned popular chinese digital wallets alipay and wechat an official said tuesday fearing loss of foreign currency earnings from thousands of chinese tourists that visit the country nepal rastra bank issued a notice on monday banning the use of the chinese digital payment platforms popularly used in hotels restaurants and shops in tourist areas especially in chineserun businesses laxmi prapanna niroula spokesman for nepals central bank said that using the platforms in the country was illegal without the banks authorisationwe have enforced a ban on alipay and wechat pay because the country is losing foreign currency earnings through its usage action will be taken if anyone is found using the platforms niroula told afp advt niroula said currently there is no record of how many transactions have taken place through the platforms as they are not recorded in nepal alipay started by ecommerce giant alibaba and owned by its affiliate ant financial and wechat pay built into tencents popular messaging service have hundreds of millions of users between them and are chinas dominant payment platforms over 150000 chinese tourists visited nepal last year helping it reach a landmark of welcoming over a million tourists for the first time tourism is a major revenue earner for impoverished nepal home to eight of the worlds 14 peaks over 8000 metres tourism contributed 78 percent to nepals gdp in 2017 creating over a million jobs according to the world travel and tourism council pti published on may 22 2019 at 0419 pm ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etretail app get realtime updates save your favourite articles scan to download app nepal bans alipay wechat nepal digital wallet nepal rastra bank homenewsnepal bans alipay wechat pay