Founder, chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ltd, Ma Huateng, speaks at a press conference in Beijing on March 3, 2016. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)
Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, founder, chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ltd, responded to hot issues related to the largest Internet service portal in China at a press conference held in Beijing on Thursday.
1. WeChat started from March 1 on to charge individual users a fee of 0.1 percent of each transfer from the app's digital wallet service to their personal bank accounts, a move much questioned by its half-a-billion users.
Ma: Banks charge a fee of 0.1 percent of each transfer from bank accounts to third-party payment platform. WeChat has been covering the cost for users but the cost rose so rapidly recently that we are not able to shoulder it anymore. The cost was more than 300 million yuan ($45.93 million) in January.
It is unreasonable that we have to shoulder the cost when money may be taken out from and put back into bank accounts within a day if people just use our digital wallet service as a channel to make transfers. I don't think any third-party payment platform can afford the cost in this circumstance.
If banks agree to refund the charges if money is transferred back into bank accounts, it will definitely reduce the cost and we will pass on the benefits to users.
2. Apple Pay has entered China, which is deemed as a new competitor for WeChat Wallet.
Ma: Apple Pay is not a third-party mobile payment service like WeChat. Apple Pay doesn't have an account. It actually changes the traditional way of swiping bank cards on POS machines by putting a virtual card into iPhone.
Banks' cooperation with Apple shows that they are embracing the Internet. I don't think there is a head-on confrontation between WeChat and Apple Pay. I believe that we are baking the market into a larger cake, which is more important.
3. Tencent has invested in car-hailing service app Didi, which is a popular online platform for sharing economy. But the car-hailing service is regarded as illegal operation in some cities.
Ma: I did talk a lot with the government about this last year because as an investor, we know this issue well.
I understand the government's concerns because it is a complicated issue involving the old system in the taxi industry. If not handled well, it will cause many social problems including unemployment. We believe that sharing economy is a right direction; we can't ignore the tendency of sharing economy because it will harm the interest of the old system. Yet we need to promote sharing economy step by step thoughtfully.
Ride-sharing service is a product that best represents the feature of sharing economy in the age of mobile Internet. You can post access to other shared resources on PC, but you can't carry a PC while hailing a car on the street. Nor can the driver install a PC in his or her car. Ride-sharing service has a big market and is an irresistible trend.
4. The world's attention is on the upcoming match between Google's AlphaGo and South Korean Go player Lee Sedol. Which side you vote for, man or machine? And what in the future of technologies, such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, interest you most?
Ma: Artificial intelligence can't win a human brain in a game of Go with exhaustion. It must apply reasoning. I have been following the development of AI with interest since I graduated from college and am excited about the match, expecting it to bring changes to AI that has been out of the spotlight for many years.
Year 2016 is said to be the first year of VR era. Hardware products have been released, so now it is important to consider what services and contents to offer. Tencent has a wide range of scenarios to apply VR, such as games, movies, live sports shows and concerts. We are open to cooperation with VR hardware manufacturers. As a service provider and integrator, we hope to raise standards from the perspective of users and develop samples of genuine VR experiences in the future. I believe that VR will mature in the coming two or three years.
