A motorist scans the QR code of a mini program in WeChat before entering a community in Chongqing in February. --Photo Xinhua

WeChat now an integral part of daily life in China, says survey

CHINA (China Daily/ANN) -- WeChat, the instant messaging application from Tencent, is increasingly becoming an indispensable part of the daily life in China, said the firm during an event on Tuesday.
There has been a steady growth in the number of users and the penetration rates across all the key WeChat tools that support transactions and enhance communication, WeChat officials said during the 2021 WeChat Open Class PRO conference in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
The event, Tencent’s flagship conference for business partners and developers, was conducted entirely via livestream for the first time. WeChat celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. It was officially launched in January 2011.The app has over 1.2 billion monthly active users.
WeChat Mini Program, an ecosystem of mobile apps embedded in WeChat, said its daily active users reached 400 million last year. Transactions via Mini Programs doubled from 800 billion yuan (US$123.2 billion) in 2019, thanks to a number of industries from retail to transportation and travel swarming to the channel that supports payment.
By the end of 2020, over 100 million users said they have made at least one purchase via Mini Programs. This has fueled the number of Mini Programs used per capita to rise by 25 percent from the levels in 2019, with average transaction value of each user surging nearly two-thirds.
“As brands today seek to better retain and engage with customers, they will invest heavily in fostering ‘private traffic’, which will definitely give WeChat, a platform with strong social gene, a big leg up,” said Maggie Wang, president of data marketing technology firm Miaozhen Systems’ business intelligence and analytics unit.

(Latest Update January 21, 2021)