WeChat Pay is one of the two largest mobile payment apps in China, but Tencent has another payment tool that helps it compete with Alipay -- QQ Wallet.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, an affiliate of Alipay owner Ant Financial.)
QQ announced on Tuesday night that users can now send money from WeChat Pay to QQ Wallet, which are separate services. But each transaction is capped at 1,000 yuan (US$145), and each WeChat account can only transfer 3,000 yuan (US$435) per month.
Tencent’s 20-year-old messaging app QQ launched its own wallet in 2014, a year after WeChat Pay. But QQ Wallet never went mainstream. Tencent reportedly said that QQ Wallet targets users in China’s lower-tier cities. The company says on its website that QQ Wallet targets young users. A QQ spokesperson told TechNode in 2017 that 60% of the platform’s users were born after 1990.
Users can use QQ Wallet for in-app purchases like QQ membership and QQ coins, and they can pay for other online services like ordering food from Meituan or making purchases on JD.com and Pinduoduo. But QQ Wallet isn’t nearly as popular as WeChat Pay when it comes to mobile payments at physical stores.