Hong Kong shares fell on Friday, dragged down by index heavyweight Tencent Holdings after the Chinese central bank called for a halt to certain types of mobile payments, causing a slide in online-payment-related stocks in China.
China shares dropped and hovered around two-month lows as nerves over the latest economic data stoked concerns of a slowing Chinese economy.
By midday, the Hang Seng Index was down a percent at 21 541.04 points. On the week, it has fallen 4.9% and is heading for its largest weekly loss since May 2012.
Tencent Holdings dropped as much as 6.4% to its lowest in four weeks, after the People's Bank of China demanded that payments made by scanning a bar code with mobile devices be halted, amid concerns over the security of their verification procedures.
Tencent, China's largest listed Internet company, and e-commerce firm Alibaba confirmed to Reuters that they had received a notice from the PBOC about the move.
On the JSE, Naspers shares also took a beating, dropping 5.59% - or R71.99 - to trade at R1 215.01 by early afternoon. Naspers owns around a third of Tencent.
"Tencent itself is a news-driven stock and people got used to seeing the shares jump lately due to its frequent expansion moves. Investors were nervous because of the report and locked in profit after the recent rally, in particular ahead of its earnings next week," said Ben Kwong, COO at KGI Asia.
"The market is cautious and people are nervous after the latest set of China data which confirmed a slowing economy in the mainland," Kwong said.
China Citic Bank, which earlier this week said it had teamed up with Tencent and Alibaba (China) on Internet finance services, fell 8.1% in Shanghai and 6.9% in Hong Kong. Quick response (QR) codes companies, the technology used for mobile online payments, were among the top drags in the market.
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