In response to a border dispute between India and China, WeChat was banned in India in June 2020 along with several other Chinese apps. WeChat's revenues from its value-added services were US$5.5 billion. 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. 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.

After the launch of WeChat payment in 2013, its users reached 400 million the next year, 90 percent of whom were in China. As of January 2022, it was reported that WeChat has more than 1.2 billion users. 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. ĭuring 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. By 2012, when the number of users reached 100 million, Weixin was re-branded 'WeChat' for the international market. 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. The original version of the app was created by Allen Zhang and named 'Weixin' ( 微信) by Pony Ma and launched in 2011.

WeChat began as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010. 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. History īy 2010, Tencent had already attained a massive user base with their desktop messenger app QQ. Joe Biden, Trump's successor as President, officially dropped Trump's efforts to ban WeChat in the 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. President Donald Trump sought to ban U.S. 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. Data transmitted by WeChat accounts registered outside China is surveilled, analyzed and used to build up censorship algorithms in China. Chinese-registered Weixin accounts censor politically sensitive topics. User activity on Weixin, the Chinese version of the app, is analyzed, tracked and shared with Chinese authorities upon request as part of the mass surveillance network in China. Non-Chinese numbers are registered under WeChat, and WeChat users are subject to a different, less strict terms of service and stricter privacy policy, and their data is stored in the Netherlands for users in the European Union, and in Singapore for other users. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.Īccounts registered using Chinese phone numbers are managed under the Weixin brand, and their data is stored in mainland China and subject to Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy, which forbids content which 'endanger national security, divulge state secrets, subvert state power and undermine national unity'. WeChat has been described as China's 'app for everything' and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. 'micro-message') are a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. WeChat and Weixin ( Chinese: 微信 pinyin: Wēixìn ( listen) lit. Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish

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