Photo

Reuters Photojournalism

Our day's top images, in-depth photo essays and offbeat slices of life. See the best of Reuters photography.  See more | Photo caption 

Photo

Berlusconi's women

A look at the women linked to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.  Slideshow 

Photo

Harvesting tobacco

With the increasing health concerns with smoking in the U.S., traditional tobacco farmers sell their crop to growing markets outside the country.  Slideshow 

Sponsored Links

China's Alibaba bans customers from using Tencent's WeChat

Related Topics

A security guard walks past a logo of Alibaba (China) Technology Co. Ltd at its headquarters on the outskirts of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province March 16, 2010.REUTERS/Lang Lang

A security guard walks past a logo of Alibaba (China) Technology Co. Ltd at its headquarters on the outskirts of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province March 16, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Lang Lang

BEIJING | Wed Jul 31, 2013 11:27pm EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Alibaba Group, whose expected IPO could value the e-commerce company as high as $100 billion, has banned its customers from using Tencent Holdings' popular WeChat mobile messaging app to do business on Alibaba sites like Tmall and Taobao.

Some merchants have been using WeChat to directly communicate with customers and encourage them to do business outside of Alibaba's transaction systems, Alibaba Group said in a statement.

"We have therefore decided to temporarily suspend the subscription of WeChat-related applications in the seller-side service app market and encourage our sellers to conduct their marketing activities in a safe and legitimate manner," the company said.

In some cases sellers had also harassed other users. Alibaba said there is no timeline for when the ban might end, but it would "monitor the situation closely."

Tencent officials declined to comment.

WeChat, which has more than 300 million users in China and 70 million overseas, has usurped Sina Corp's Weibo microblogging service to become China's most popular social messaging app.

(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Matt Driskill)

 
We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/
Comments (0)
Be the first to comment on reuters.com.
Add yours using the box above.