Since its release in 2011, WeChat has expanded from being a mere messaging app to an all-purpose digital tool capable of everything from social sharing to investment, attracting hundreds of millions of users in the process. But parent company Tencent won’t stop there.

WeChat, owned by one of China’s largest internet companies, Tencent, has also dramatically reduced her use of voice calls and e-mail. “The group discussion function is especially useful when we want to have a quick chat with a client that doesn’t require a face-to-face meeting,” she says. “It’s faster and more efficient than a conference call or sending a lot of e-mails back and forth.”

WeChat strives not only to be popular, but also indispensable. It seeks to deliver a mobile lifestyle tailored for Chinese smartphone users, serving as a platform for communication, content, gaming, shopping and even banking. The rest of the world has nothing like it.

“Outside of mainland China you need different apps to handle all the functions WeChat offers,” says Jamie Lin, co-founder of the Taipei-based accelerator AppWorks and an expert on the mobile internet. He notes that Taiwanese share photos on Facebook and Instagram, chat on Facebook Messenger or Naver’s Line (a Japanese app similar to WhatsApp), and use Apple Pay or a number of local providers for mobile payments. But in mainland China, “mobile internet users can do almost anything possible without ever leaving WeChat.”

Businesses encourage the purchase of their products and services through WeChat with incentives such as loyalty cards, membership schemes and discounts for paying online. The use of QR codes, an advanced bar code, makes it even handier—simply scan and send money.

Today, WeChat has over 300 million active users regularly using the payment functions (it launched in August, 2013.) “I use WeChat like a bankcard to pay for restaurant meals, taxi rides and groceries,” says Rachel Chen, a recent college graduate. “It’s very convenient for me because I don’t have any credit cards.”

Tenpay, which powers the Wallet, charges users a 0.1% transaction fee for withdrawing sums above RMB 1,000 ($147.11) from their WeChat accounts. It is easy to avoid the fee: simply leave the money in the WeChat balance or use it within the WeChat world. Observers say the fees encourage users to keep money circulating within the WeChat Wallet ecosystem and encourage spending it within the system.

Source: knowledge