Wangfujing Department Store joins with Tencent on mobile payment

Beijing Wangfujing Department Store (Group) Co and Tencent, China's leading Internet company, have inked a deal on a strategic partnership focusing on online platforms and mobile payment, the Wangfujing Department Store announced on Wednesday.

According to a filing posted on Shanghai Stock Exchange by the group, Tencent will use its technology, media resources and its popular instant messaging app WeChat to help the Wangfujing Department Store develop a framework with all-round service channels.

Based on the cooperation, Wangfujing Department Store is set to adopt WeChat's online shopping service dubbed WeChat Shopping on Friday, Valentine's Day.

WeChat Shopping, launched in November 2013, allows shoppers to place orders online by scanning physical objects' Quick Response (QR) codes.

The two will also roll out a sales promotion on that day, awarding customers with a gift if they pay 0.01 yuan ($0.001) via scanning the WeChat QR codes while shopping in Wangfujing.

Before the Wangfujing deal, Tencent joined with Hunan-based retail group Friendship & Apollo to bridge virtual and actual shopping experience with WeChat online payment tools.

Although Tencent operates China's third-largest e-commerce site, yixun.com, by transaction volumes, following Alibaba and JD, its market share remains small, according to the Beijing News newspaper.

Insiders say Tencent hopes to forge an exclusive e-commerce ecosystem with more retail giants to profit from WeChat's large user base, trying to transform its advantages in the virtual world to the real world, said the report.