The popular messenger app is making rapid gains in the competitive payments space.
The future of payments? Image: Jason Tester |
As ApplePay gains momentum in North America and Europe, Tencent's ubiquitous messenger app is growing market share in China.
The online giant now has more than 200m users' credit card and purchasing information, which, when coupled with the same information from their peer group and friends, is making it a powerful tool for marketers.
WeChat, which has over 650 monthly active users, has leveraged its position as one of China's most popular messenger apps to make it a formidable rival to Alibaba's original payments platform, Alipay.
The payments service gained popularity after a clever campaign over Chinese New Year that allowed users to send "Red Envelopes" of money to each other using their smartphones. It has also been successful in monetising its social network feed, "Moments", on its WeChat platform, generating 2.4bn yuan ($380m) during the last quarter.