Chinese regulators have ordered the suspension of transactions via financial Mini Apps, a feature within popular messaging and utilities app WeChat, citing security concerns.

Several outlets including China Securities Journal and Beijing Morning Post reported that some financial apps have disappeared from the WeChat platform. Beijing Morning Post said that regulators had told a fund management company to disable the transaction functions of their Mini Apps, and the apps should only be used to display products. The Mini Apps were only permitted to support URL redirection for account opening services, said the Chinese Securities Regulator Commission.

The measure was taken out of security considerations and should be implemented immedi‍ately, the report added.

On January 9, Internet giant Tencent officially launched Mini Apps within its popular app WeChat to create a lightweight way for businesses to reach consumers. 

Mini Apps is a feature that lets users interact with app-like services within ‍WeChat, without having to download them. Users can open them simply by scanning QR codes or searching from their WeChat accounts. Each Mini App is less than 1MB in size.

The first batch of fund management companies to roll out Mini Apps included China Asset Management, Harvest Fund, China Southern Asset Management, GF Fund Management, Yinhua Fund Management and CCB Principal Asset Management.

But only the Mini Apps of China Southern and Harvest Fund are still available, for the purpose of presenting their services and hyperlinks to online wealth management products.

(Based on a story from Ecns)