WeChat (Chinese: 微信; pinyin: Wēixìn ; lit. 'micro-message') is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat
Overview
WeChat (Chinese: 微信; pinyin: Wēixìn ; lit. 'micro-message') is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. It has been described as having "an almost indispensable part of life in China". To sign up for WeChat, a user may need to provide their bank cards or ask another WeChat user to scan their QR code. Accounts registered with telephone numbers in mainland China store data in mainland China and are governed by Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy. Non-Chinese WeChat users enjoy different, more liberal terms of service and a stricter privacy policy. WeChat users’ personal information (excluding users in mainland China) is stored in Singapore, or in Hong Kong for users in Hong Kong and Macau. WeChat users’ personal information may also be transferred to the Netherlands, Malaysia, and the United States. Personal information of international WeChat accounts can ultimately still be accessed remotely from mainland China by Tencent, and interactions between WeChat and Weixin users are subject to both services' policies. Activities on both versions may be monitored and shared with Chinese authorities on request. WeChat censor politically sensitive topics and ban content deemed threatening to national security, social order, or state policy. Tencent deleted LGBTQ official accounts without warning. Tencent also blocks international WeChat accounts for content considered lewd material, violence, scams, rumors, or false ads. WeChat blocked or censored accounts of Americans and Canadians, many of whom were of Chinese ancestry, discussing Hong Kong. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s account was also blocked. Account bans can significantly disrupt users' lives in China.
History
By 2010, Tencent had already attained a massive user base with their desktop messenger app QQ. Recognizing smart phones were likely to disrupt this status quo, CEO Pony Ma sought to proactively invest in alternatives to their own QQ messenger app. WeChat began as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010. The original version of the app was created by Allen Zhang, named "Weixin" (微信) by Pony Ma, and launched in 2011. The user adoption of WeChat was initially very slow, with users wondering why key features were missing; however, after the release of the Walkie-talkie-like voice messaging feature in May of that year, growth surged. By 2012, when the number of users reached 100 million, Weixin was re-branded "WeChat" by President Martin Lau for the international market. During a period of government support of e-commerce development—for example in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015)—WeChat also saw new features enabling payments and commerce in 2013, which saw massive adoption after their virtual Red envelope promotion for Chinese New Year 2014. WeChat had over 889 million monthly active users by 2016, and as of 2019 WeChat's monthly active users had risen to an estimate of one billion. As of January 2022, it was reported that WeChat has more than 1.2 billion users. After the launch of WeChat payment in 2013, its users reached 400 million the next year, 90 percent of whom were in China. By comparison, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp had about one billion monthly active users in 2016 but did not offer most of the other services available on WeChat. For example, in Q2 2017, WeChat's revenues from social media advertising were about US$0.9 billion (RMB6 billion) compared with Facebook's total revenues of US$9.3 billion, 98% of which were from social media advertising. WeChat's revenues from its value-added services were US$5.5 billion. By 2018, WeChat had been used by 93.5% of Chinese internet users. In that year, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. As of March 2026, WeChat + Weixin has a combined monthly users of 1.432B. From 2018-2021 their monthly users increased about 4.9% a year, and from 2021-2025 their monthly users increased about 2.8% year. In response to a border dispute between India and China, WeChat was banned in India in June 2020 along with several other Chinese apps, including TikTok. U.S. president Donald Trump sought to ban U.S. "transactions" with WeChat through an executive order but was blocked by a preliminary injunction issued in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in September 2020. Joe Biden officially dropped Trump's efforts to ban WeChat in the U.S. in June 2021.
Features
WeChat, has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. It has been described as having "an almost indispensable part of life in China". Due to its central part of Chinese life, a Chinese person having their WeChat account banned can cause a significant disruption to their life.
Messaging
WeChat provides a variety of features including text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video calls and conferencing, video games, photograph and video sharing, as well as location sharing. WeChat also allows users to exchange contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth, as well as providing various features for contacting people at random if desired (if people are open to it). It can also integrate with other social networking services such as Facebook and Tencent QQ. Photographs may also be embellished with filters and captions, and automatic translation service is available and could also translate the conversation during messaging. WeChat provides various instant messaging methods, including text messages, voice messages, walkie talkie, and stickers. Users can send previously saved or live pictures and videos, profiles of other users, coupons, lucky money packages, or current GPS locations with friends either individually or in a group chat. WeChat also provides a message recall feature to allow users to recall and withdraw information (e.g. images, documents) that are sent within 2 minutes in a conversation. WeChat also provides a voice-to-text feature for use when it is not convenient to listen to voice messages, as well as the basic ability to recognize emojis based on different tones of voice. WeChat has a distance sensing feature, in which it activate the receiver's hold-to-talk function when the phone is brought in close proximity to the ear. Moving the device a certain distance from the ear disables the speakers. This feature prevents bystanders from hearing voice messages.
Official Accounts
WeChat users can register as an official account (公众号), which enables them to push feeds to subscribers, interact with subscribers, and provide subscribers with services. Users can also create an official account, which fall under service, subscription, or enterprise accounts. Once users as individuals or organizations set up a type of account, they cannot change it to another type. By the end of 2014, the number of WeChat official accounts had reached 8 million. Official accounts of organizations can apply to be verified (cost 300 RMB or about US$45). Official accounts can be used as a platform for services such as hospital pre-registrations, or credit card service. To create an official account, the applicant must register with Chinese authorities, which discourages "foreign companies". In April 2022, WeChat announced that it will start displaying the location of users in China every time they post on a public account. Meanwhile, overseas users on public accounts will also display the country based on their IP address.
Moments
"Moments" (朋友圈) is WeChat's brand name for its social feed of friends' updates. "Moments" is an interactive platform that allows users to post images, text, and short videos taken by users. It also allows users to share articles and music (associated with QQ Music or other web-based music services). Friends in the contact list can like the content and leave comments, functioning similarly to a private social network. In 2017 WeChat had a policy of a maximum of two advertisements per day per Moments user. Privacy in WeChat works by groups of friends: only the friends from the user's contact are able to view their Moments' contents and comments. The friends of the user will only be able to see the likes and comments from other users only if they are in a mutual friend group. For example, friends from high school are not able to see the comments and likes from friends from a university. When users post their moments, they can separate their friends into a few groups, and they can decide whether this Moment can be seen by particular groups of people. Contents posted can be set to "Private", and then only the user can view it. Unlike Weibo or Instagram, these are only shared to the user's friends. These are unlikely to go viral. Recently, WeChat launched a new feature allowing users to pin posts to Moments, so that others can re-watch them, enabling easier tracking of important posts and permanent display of posts.
WeChat Pay
Users who have provided bank account information may use the app to pay bills, order goods and services, transfer money to other users, and pay in stores if the stores have a WeChat payment option. Vetted third parties, known as "official accounts", offer these services by developing lightweight "apps within the app". Users can link their Chinese bank accounts, as well as Visa, MasterCard and JCB. WeChat Pay, officially referred to as Weixin Pay (微信支付) in China and WeChat Pay HK in Hong Kong, is a digital wallet service incorporated into WeChat, which allows users to perform mobile payments and send money between contacts. Although users receive immediate notification of the transaction, WeChat Pay is not an instant payment instrument, because the funds transfer between counterparts is not immediate. The settlement time depends on the payment method chosen by the customer. All WeChat users have their own WeChat Pay accounts. Users can acquire a balance by linking their WeChat account to their debit cards, or by receiving money from other users. For non-Chinese users of Weixin Pay, an additional identity verification process of providing a photo of a valid ID is required before certain functions of Weixin Pay become available. Users who link their credit card can only make payments to vendors, and cannot use this to top up WeChat balances. WeChat Pay can be used for digital payments, as well as payments from participating vendors. As of March 2016, WeChat Pay had over 300 million users. WeChat Pay's main competitor in China and the market leader in online payments is Alibaba Group's Alipay. Alibaba company founder Jack Ma considered WeChat red envelope to be a "Pearl Harbor moment", as it began to erode Alipay's historic dominance in the online payment industry in China, especially in peer-to-peer money transfer.The success prompted Alibaba to launch its own version of virtual red envelopes in its competing Laiwang service. Other competitors, Baidu Wallet and Sina Weibo, also launched similar features. What was called the 'Red Envelope War', resulted in 16 million red envelopes being sent in 2014 which grew to 1 billion the following year. Tencent even introduced a new aspect to the red envelope gimmick by allowing users to distribute an allocated sum of money among friends on a first-come, first-served basis, resulting in customers frequently checking the WeChat application. Alibaba that owns Tmall, Taobao, and Alibaba's e-commerce sites, collaborated with more than 40 sponsors to give away US$123 million to users who participated in its own interactive game during a New Years Gala Show sponsored by China Central Television. They also introduced a 'Lucky Card Collection' game that allowed users to collect and exchange cards to become eligible to win cash prizes. By adding 10 friends to Alipay users could get three cards that went towards the five virtual cards needed to get a share in the US$33 million. The rivalry continued into 2016 when WeChat sent 8 billion hongbao using the application and blocked WeChat users from sharing Alipay red envelopes with their friends through WeChat. In 2019 it was reported that WeChat had overtaken Alibaba with 800 million active WeChat mobile payment users versus 520 million for Alibaba's Alipay. However Alibaba had a 54 per cent share of the Chinese mobile online payments market in 2017 compared to WeChat's 37 per cent share. In the same year, Tencent introduced "WeChat Pay HK", a payment service for users in Hong Kong. Transactions are carried out with the Hong Kong dollar. In 2019 it was reported that Chinese users can use WeChat Pay in 25 countries outside China, including, Italy, South Africa and the UK. WeChat is more of a messaging and social application that offers users a one-time solution for engagement through chats and direct purchases. It promotes community builiding and more one to one engagement. Alibaba's in September 2024 announced that Taobao and Tmall would accept WeChat Pay as a form of payment for online purchases. This allowed people who were used Taobao to pay through WeChat Pay without using the application making a lot easier and faster to make purchases.
WeCom
For work purposes, companies and business communication, a special version of WeChat called WeCom (formally known as Enterprise WeChat (or Qiye Weixin) and WeChat Work before Nov 2020) was launched in 2016. The app was meant to help employees separate work from private life. In addition to the usual chat features, the program let companies and their employees keep track of annual leave days and expenses that need to be reimbursed, employees could ask for time off or clock in to show they were at work.
Mini Programs
In 2017, WeChat launched a feature called "Mini Programs" (小程序). A mini program is an app within an app. Business owners can create mini apps in the WeChat system, implemented using proprietary versions of CSS, JavaScript, and templated XML JavaScript with proprietary APIs. Users may install these inside the WeChat app. In January 2018, WeChat announced a record of 580,000 mini programs. With one Mini Program, consumers could scan the Quick Response code using their mobile phone at a supermarket counter and pay the bill through the user's WeChat mobile wallet. WeChat Games have received huge popularity, with its "Jump Jump" game attracting 400 million players in less than 3 days and attaining 100 million daily active users in just two weeks after its launch, as of January 2018. Ever since WeChat Mini Program's Launch, the daily active user count of WeChat Mini Programs are increasing dramatically. In 2017, there were only 160 million daily active users, however, the number reached 450 million in 2021.
WeChat Channels
In 2020, WeChat Channels were launched. They are a short video platform within WeChat that allows users to create and share short video clips and photos to their own WeChat Channel. Users of Channels can also discover content posted to other Channels by others via the in-built feed. Each post can include hashtags, a location tag, a short description, and a link to an WeChat official account article. In September 2021, it was reported that WeChat Channels began allowing users to upload hour-long videos, twice of the duration limit previously imposed on all WeChat Channels videos. Comparisons are often drawn between WeChat Channels and TikTok (or Douyin) for their similarity in features. In January 2022, there were reports that WeChat is set to diversify further and place more emphasis on new products and services like WeChat Channels, amid new regulatory restrictions imposed in China. By June 2021, WeChat Channels had accumulated over 200 million users, and WeChat Channels have 500 million DAU (Daily Active Users), growing at 79% year-on -year. More than 27 million people had used the platform to watch Irish boy band Westlife's online concert in 2021, and 15 million users also viewed the Shenzhou 12 spaceflight launch using the app service.
Easy Mode
In September 2021, WeChat introduced a brand-new feature on its platform called Easy Mode. It was mainly designed for elderly people with higher readability by providing a larger font size, sharper colours, and bigger buttons. Another feature provided in this update was the ability to listen to text messages. Easy Mode was released in version 8.0.14 for both iOS and Android.
Guardian Mode
Guardian Mode is a function in WeChat for protecting users under 14 years old. It was introduced to promote safety and provide security environment for WeChat users. After operating the Guardian Mode, the functions of "people nearby", "games", "search" will not be accessible in the interface. The channels function in WeChat, a video mini program, would only show contents suitable for adolescents. Additionally, WeChat users who turn on the Guardian Mode are only able to add friends through QR codes and group chats. Moreover, WeChat users would only be able to view 10 latest Moments posts and would not be able to view the 10 latest Moments posts of non-friend users under the privacy setting of Guardian Mode.
Wikipedia contributors · WeChat · revision 1381661801 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Plain text extracted and formatting adapted; tags derived from linked topics.