Ant Group, the official payment partner for the Hangzhou Asian Games, announced that Alipay had completed the support for overseas users to use mobile payment services in China.

Athletes and tourists from around the world can now enjoy various convenient services across the country using Alipay, including shopping, hailing a taxi, taking the subway, and visiting tourist attractions.

To use these services, users must download the Alipay app, click “Register Account”, and select the “International Version”. After completing the registration, users can click on “Add Now” to enter the card binding page and follow the prompts to complete the card binding operation.

Alipay now supports international card organizations such as Visa, Mastercard, and Discover Global Network (including Diners Club). Furthermore, the usage of Alipay after binding an international card is no different from using a domestic bank card, supporting both QR code payment and payment code payment.

Similarly, Tencent announced a deepened cooperation with international card organizations such as Visa, Discover Global Network (including Diners Club), JCB, and Mastercard.

This collaboration aims to systematically open up WeChat Pay’s merchant network in various cities in China. Inbound individuals can activate WeChat Pay by using their passport, Hong Kong and Macau Residents Travel Permit (Home Return Permit), Taiwan Residents Travel Permit (Taiwan Compatriot Permit), Hong Kong and Macau Residents Residence Permit, Taiwan Residents Residence Permit, and Foreign Permanent Resident ID.

After binding an international bank card, they can conveniently consume at millions of small and medium-sized merchants.

These developments mark a significant step towards making mobile payments more accessible to foreigners in China, providing them the same convenience that local residents enjoy. It is expected to significantly enhance the experience of foreign visitors in China, especially in the context of the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games.

In 2022, the total views of the original content on WeChat Channel (video account) increased by 350% year on year, and the scale of live broadcast increased by 300%, according to WeChat’s data released on 10 January 2023.

The commercial potential of live video broadcasting continues to be released, and the corresponding e-commerce sales increased by more than eight times year on year.

In 2022, the number of daily active creators and the average number of videos uploaded by the video account increased by more than 100% year on year, the number of creators with at least 10,000 fans increased by 308%.

The number of video account earners increased by 101%, and the total income of live video anchors increased by 447%.

Live video GMV increased by more than 8 times year on year in 2022, and the average selling price exceeded 200 yuan. Among them, the top three categories of consumption are covered by clothing, food, and beauty.

The monthly active users of WeChat Search have increased to 800 million, and the total search volume increased by 54%. Mini Programs are widely used in scenic spots, hotels, airports, and other fields, and the number of WeChat Mini Programs has increased by 183%.

WeChat Search contributed to 27% of Official Account follower growth and 20% of Mini Program’s new daily active users. Its contribution to WeChat Channel follower growth has increased by 120%.

WeChat MAU

Over 330 million of WeChat’s (known as Weixin in China) 1.2883 billion monthly active users use video calling. 780 million users are on the social networking section WeChat Moments and 120 million publish updates. The content network WeChat Official Account has 360 million users.

WeChat has evolved from an instant messaging app to a service meeting the digital needs of over 1.27 billion MAU in Q4 2021. Each day, more than 120 million active users post in social networking Moments, 360 million users read Official Accounts articles, and 500 million users access Mini Programs (Q1 2022) daily.

For Q4 2021, WeChat daily active advertisers expanded by over 30% year-on-year. Over one-third of Moments’ advertising revenue was generated from advertisements using Mini Programs as landing pages and advertisements connecting users to customer service representatives via WeCom.

WeChat Video Accounts’ time spent per user and total video views more than doubled year-on-year as Tencent enriched content diversity and enhanced the product experience.

WeChat Mini Programs

The daily active users on WeChat Mini Programs reached 450 million according to WeChat official data in January 2022. The transaction volume of catering, tourism, and retail increased by 100% year-on-year. Mini Program DAU reached 500 million (Q1 2022).

The number of Mini Program developers has exceeded 3 million.

In 2020, the daily active users of WeChat Mini Programs exceeded 400 million, according to its official data shared at its annual event WeChat Public Lecture.

The number of mini programs used per user increased by 25%, the average transaction value per user grew by 67%, the number of programs with transactions increased by 68%, and the annual transaction volume of more than doubled in 2020.

In 2020, more than 100 million people purchased in shopping malls and department stores on WeChat Mini Programs. With the help of mini program pre-sale + offline self pick-up mode, more than 300 million users purchased fresh fruits and vegetables.

WeChat Mini Programs overview

WeChat Games

In 2020, the commercial realization of WeChat mini games increased by 20%.

Last year, the proportion of male and female users in the distribution of mini games accounted for 50% respectively. 40% of the users in the first and second-tier cities, and 65% of the users aged 30 and above.

Compared with 2019, the per capita game duration of mini games increased by 50%, and the average number of games played increased by 20% in 2020.

China game live streaming revenues to double by 2021

WeChat Search

The number of monthly active users of WeChat search has reached 700 million according to WeChat official data released in January 2022.

WeChat search staff said that in the mobile Internet era, search should not be limited by the search box, but need to be accessible by the touch. Users can search while chatting.

WeChat search will screen out the high-quality content of WeChat and produce a more accurate connection with users.

In the future, it can expand the search scope to the whole internet-based the needs of users. The search results are currently mostly provided by WeChat Official Account and Sogou.

Top search trends in China

WeChat Pay

In January 2022, WeChat shared the latest progress on WeChat Pay:

• 23 thousand monthly service providers
• Over 10 million merchants
• More than 1800 banks and Payment institutions
• 23 thousand monthly merchants
• In the next three years, WeChat Pay will continue to carry out digital upgrading of WeStore, with a planned investment of more than 10 billion yuan

In 2020, Zhifufen, a credit score on WeChat Pay, saw more than 240 million users. It boosted the conversion rate of e-commerce orders by 14% and the repurchase rate of retail merchants by 73%.

In 2021, WeChat mini stores and Zhuanzhuan (a secondhand-goods marketplace) will integrate Zhifufen.

In the e-commerce industry, WeChat Pay’s Zhifufen enables post-payment after receiving the delivery and faster refund. Users can quickly receive a refund after submitting return logistics information.

As of January 2022, more than 50% of users have activated Zhifufen, whose solutions cover more than 3000 industries. WeChat Pay unit cooperates with the e-commerce industry on “buy first and pay later”, which has been used by more than 100 million users.

Zhifufen also announced the launch of audio and video members’ services such as “watch first and pay later”, which helped solve the problems that bothered audio/music and video users to deduct fees in advance and forget to terminate their contracts.

China’s online payment users penetration reaching 86%

Enterprise version of WeChat: WeCom

In 2020, there were 80,000 enterprise WeChat partners, with a year-on-year growth of 400%. 

Acquire, convert, and retain customers through WeChat Ads + WeChat Work (WeCom)

UnionPay Flash supports the top-up payment of QCoin, QQ Music, and Tencent Videos. WeChat Mini Programs will gradually support Flash Pay, being in beta test since 22 September.

On October 2nd, Alipay announced the progress in promoting interconnection with China UnionPay. it has opened online payment scenes to the UnionPay Flash app, covering the first batch of 85% Taobao merchants.

For offline, it has also implemented QR code scanning and mutual recognition with UnionPay Flash payment in multiple cities and plans to cover all cities in China by March 2022.

UnionPay, also known as China UnionPay or by its abbreviation, CUP or UPI internationally, is a Chinese financial services corporation headquartered in Shanghai, China. It provides bank card services and a major card scheme in mainland China.

Founded on 26 March 2002, China UnionPay is an association for China’s banking card industry, operating under the approval of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC, central bank of China).

It is also an electronic funds transfer at point of sale (EFTPOS) network, and the only interbank network in China that links all the automatic teller machine (ATMs) of all banks throughout the country.

In 2015, UnionPay overtook Visa and Mastercard in a total amount of value of payment transactions made by customers and became the largest card payment processing organization (debit and credit cards combined) in the world after the two.

China’s 3rd-party payment market 2021-2025e: mobile vs. internet

These coupons are for all people in Wuhan. WeChat real-name verified users can enter the corresponding mini program to collect the coupon.

At the same time, there are 1.8 billion yuan (US$254.63 million) worth of business coupons issued by online platforms. The first phase started at 12:00 p.m. on April 19 and will last for six weeks until May 31 2020. And, the second phase will start on 1 June 2020.

One coupon can be collected at a time, with a face value of 10 yuan, 20 yuan, 50 yuan, and 80 yuan. The first phase will have 30 million yuan coupons, redeemable from 20th April onwards.

The Wuhan consumption voucher received by consumers through the WeChat mini program is applicable to the merchants who use WeChat merchant payment settlement. However, merchants who use the personal WeChat payment code, will not accept those vouchers.

According to Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce, the city’s fifth round of e-consumption coupons was issued at 8pm of 20 April, with a total of 1.5 million digital card packages. Each has a total value of 50 yuan, including 5 general consumption coupons with a value of 10 yuan each and 10 yuan further subsidy for every 40 yuan consumption.

As of 24:00 on April 16, 321 million yuan (US$45.41 mn) of Hangzhou government subsidies had been claimed in the first four rounds of coupon campaigns driving a total consumption of 3.422 billion yuan (US$484.05 bn).

As of 20 April 2020, cities in Guangdong province have issued 1 billion yuan worth of e-coupons.

Update (5 Jun): Since the worst of the Covid-19 outbreak in China, the country has issued over RMB5.6 billion ($788 million) in such incentives.

China GDP declined by 6.8% in Q1 2020

The number of e-commerce transactions on WeChat mini-programs increased by 27 times year-on-year in the first half of 2019, according to an official Tencent report.

The top age groups of retail e-commerce mini-programs on WeChat are 30-39, 20-29, and 40-49.

In the meantime, WeChat Pay expanded aggressively in China’s campuses in the first half of 2019, reaching over 50,000 K12 institutions, 1,000+ universities, and 100 thousand education and training institutions. The number of WeChat Pay transactions in universities exceeded 100 million, up 200% YoY.

See a quick comparison of mini-program platforms: WeChat vs. Alipay vs. Baidu

WeChat is testing a new traffic entrance, using payment pages to drive fans from their offline stores according to eBrun News.

The new function of WeChat Pay is still in the stage of internal testing, which is currently limited to offline face-to-face payment.

Merchants can choose to set a WeChat individual account as a “group customer service” in the backend, and the corresponding QR code will be displayed on the page after the user clicks “Join the merchant welfare group”. Users can join the group by adding customer service as a friend.

Continue to read how TikTok helped a milk tea rise to popularity.

The increase in Tencent’s revenues in Fintech in 2018 was driven by its take-rate on commercial transactions collected from merchants, cash withdrawal fees and credit card repayment charges collected from users, and the service fees from financial institutions for the distribution of FinTech products such as WeiLiDai and the wealth management products on our LiCaiTong platform.

In January 2019, Tencent completed the transition to the centralized clearing and settlement system and moved all custodian cash to the accounts of the People’s Bank of China.

WeChat Pay launched a new user interface enabling easier access to new features including virtual subsidiary cards for parents and children. It enhanced account management tools for merchants, including cash register, book-keeping, and revenue sharing settlement functions.

WeChat users grew further to 1.098 billion as of December 2018.

The total daily payment transaction volume exceeded 1 billion for 2018, driven by rapid growth in commercial payments, which represented more than half of the number of transactions. The commercial payment revenue more than doubled year-on-year in 2018. The payment platform connects with tens of millions of merchants and monthly active merchants increased over 80% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Tencent boosted its payment penetration in the food and retail industries thanks to features such as Mini Programs and Scan-to-Pay solution in 2018.

In Hong Kong, Tencent launched the first-of-its-kind cross-border mobile payment service in October 2018, which enables WeChat Pay Hong Kong users to conduct RMB-denominated transactions funded by Hong Kong dollars.

Tencent’s cross-border mobile payment service now covers approximately 1 million merchants in Mainland China, including taxi-hailing, food ordering, and highspeed railway ticketing services. The transaction volume of WeChat Pay Hong Kong increased more than 10 times year-on-year.

Tencent launched WeChat Pay Malaysia services in August, offering online transactions such as mobile credit top-ups, flight and bus ticket purchases, and offline transactions at retail outlets, such as supermarkets, fashion and beauty stores.

Globally, Tencent is expanding our footprint by supporting China outbound travelers to make cross-border payments in overseas destinations, and it now offers real-time tax refund services for Weixin Pay users in over 80 airports. Weixin Pay is now available in 49 markets outside Mainland China, supporting cross-border payment transactions in 16 currencies.

Building on its payment user base, Tencent offers FinTech services to under-served consumers, conveniently and at low cost. LiCaiTong, the wealth management platform, helped manage over 600 billion yuan of customer assets as of the end of 2018.

WeBank, Tencent associated online banking business, achieved rapid growth in the outstanding loan balance of its micro-loan product for consumers, WeiLiDai. WeBank also expanded its loan services to enterprises, serving the financing needs for small and micro businesses customers through WeiYeDai.

LiCaiTong enlarged its user base, reaching 100 million accumulated users by the end of 2018. Tencent expanded its FinTech services by rolling out LingQianTong, which enables users to invest the unused cash balance in their WeChat Pay accounts in funds.

China’s payment and online banking mobile app market overview

WeChat is going to launch a new feature “Gifts upon payment” for WeChat Pay to get the small and medium merchants further engaged in January 2019. They can exchange those points with increased limits for balance withdrawal or VIP membership of Tencent Video, etc. 

Merchants who hold the WeChat Officially issued QR code could earn points every time someone transfers money to them by scanning such QR code, 1 yuan for 1 point. The accumulated points can be used to exchange profits, such as free service fee for cash withdrawal if they want to withdraw balance from WeChat Wallet to their bank card.

They can check the detailed information in “Receipts Manager” to check what benefits are available with points they have earned at that moment. For example, they can exchange a certain amount of points with Tencent WeSim Card, WeChat Reading coupons, VIP membership of Tencent Video, tools for WeSing, or coupons for JD.com and Vipshop, etc.

In this way, more and more merchants and retailers would be happy to provide and encourage WeChat Pay options for customers. In return, some merchants might find a way to provide better services considering all those profits they are to get with the support of repeated customers.

China mobile payment usage in Q3 2018; Tenpay (Tencent) the highest penetration