WeChat to offer online payment for quick purchases

Shenzhen-based Internet service giant Tencent Holdings announced on Wednesday that it will make online payment available for users of its popular WeChat service.

Zeng Ming, president of Tencent's product development department, told reporters at the company's partners meeting Wednesday afternoon that individual users will be able to make payments directly on WeChat after seeing product promotions published by public accounts, usually run by companies or social groups.

Until now, users have had to pay offline and order by calling the companies' customer service lines.

WeChat, which has more than 300 million users in China and over 70 million overseas, allows its users to exchange text, picture and voice messages on their smartphones using Internet data.

Zeng said the newest version of WeChat will tear down the barriers between online and offline payment. China Unicom has started testing online telephone fee payments on WeChat, according to news portal sina.com.cn.

Lu Jingyu, an analyst of consulting firm iResearch, told the Global Times that the online payment platform will significantly improve WeChat's user experience and is likely to make it an even more popular app.

"Individual users benefit since all they need to do to buy a product on WeChat is click once; and public account holders will evade the cost of handling phone calls and enjoy more customers buying online," Lu said. "This will make WeChat's shopping scene more robust."

Lu said this is a major step for WeChat to explore its interest in the online-to-offline (O2O) business model, in which the Internet is the first stop for customers to get promotions and reviews that then lead them to offline, physical companies and stores.

Although WeChat's move will significantly upgrade its current service, Lu does not expect the new WeChat to crush existing O2O businesses such as Yelp-like customer review website dianping.com, Lu said.

"Dianping.com has plenty of off­line resources, including restaurants and shops, and WeChat will have to take a long time to catch up with," she said.