How WeChat started to promote WeBank - Matthew Brennan

Matthew Brennan

E-commerce expert Matthew Brennan discovered how WeChat silently started to promote Tencent's WeBank, a potentially major move in pushing internet banking ahead of the traditional banks in China, he writes on his website China Channel. The old banks will have to run for their money.

Matthew Brennan:

A few days ago a small but potentially important new change on WeChat was quietly released without any official announcement (to date). There’s now finally a way to get around WeChat Pay’s yearly balance transaction limit and it seems that this is now WeChat’s first serious move to promote WeBank, which makes it a big deal... 

WeChat Pay currently has a yearly user balance transaction limit of 200,000 RMB (roughly 30,000 USD). For power WeChat Pay users and small businesses alike, this limit has caused some pain. Yet in the past few days, it seems a small but potentially important new change on WeChat was released without any fanfare.. 

This new move is just one of the recent ways that WeChat Pay is trying to make up ground with Alipay in terms of providing mobile financial products and services by leveraging WeBank. Another big one is WeChat’s Lingqiantong 零钱通 feature which allows users to earn daily interest on the balance left in their WeChat wallet, a very similar feature to Alipay’s massively successful Yu’e bao 余额宝.... 

Bye, bye traditional banks. We don’t need you anymore. WeChat and Alipay control the relationship with the customer. They find smart ways to incentivize users to open up accounts at their own internet banks and link those up instead.

More at the China Channel.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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