Tencent Mum On WeChat Mobile Payments Plan

As Tencent continues to grow its user base on its popular messaging app, the company’s executive team said it plans to look for ways to invest in the mobile payments side of the app — but they remain vague on how exactly Tencent will implement possible mobile commerce plans.

Tencent announced as part of its first quarter earnings that it now has 549 million monthly active users on its WeChat, which was a 9.8 percent increase from the 500 million monthly active users it hit at the end of 2014. Overall, Tencents Q1 MAU was a 39 percent increase from last 2014’s Q1 figures.

“During the first quarter of 2015, we continued to expand our mobile user base and improve our engagement with users, while delivering solid financial results. Our key mobile properties extended their leadership in China and continued to broaden user activities from social and communications to gaming, entertainment, media content, payment, and beyond,” Tencent’s CEO Ma Huateng said in the company’s earnings release. “Our Red Envelope gifting initiative spurred increased adoption of our payment solutions and boosted total payment volumes. Looking ahead, we aim to bring further technology benefits to users through our ‘Internet +’ strategy of connecting users with services in various vertical industries through collaboration with a broad range of partners.”

While he highlighted that Tencent is looking to expand its user base, he also indicated that Tencent would invest more in the payments side of the WeChat app — if it has the opportunity to do so — but he was mum on what the opportunity could be or how the company could develop its mobile payments plan. He also spoke briefly about how Tencent plans to look toward new ways to leverage its mobile payments capabilities while scaling back one of its mobile payment options.

“I think now we have scale down that promotion on taxi-hailing. If there are other ways to which we can actually promote our mobile payment solution we will — [ways that] actually will impact that money in order for us to continue to build our mobile payment franchise,” Huateng said during the company’s earnings call with analysts.

Speaking more generally, and toward how Tencent plans to use its mobile payments platform to increase transactions, he spoke about how the company plans to build its mobile payments business from both a consumer and merchant standpoint. Despite being vague on how its mobile payment plans are progressing, he provided optimism that the company is growing its mobile payment merchant base.

“For mobile payment solutions, it’s actually sort of a two ended platform. You need to have more merchants than you can actually attract more users using it, and having more users you can actually attract more, more merchants,” Huateng said. “So, I think we’ve seen a virtual cycle in terms of increasing the number of people who can pay and increasing number of merchants. So, the overall growth track is actually quite healthy.”