The Messaging App WeChat Exceeds 1 Billion User Account

WeChat, the Chinese Internet giant Tencent’s multi-function messaging system, now has more than a billion user accounts, said group boss Pony Ma. In China, WeChat is ubiquitous: the application for the smartphone is both mobile messaging, social network, information and content channel, online sales platform and electronic payment system.”The number of monthly active users of WeChat in the world has exceeded the one billion mark,” Tencent executive director Pony Ma told reporters on Monday, according to a video broadcast by Chinese media. Tencent said he was actually talking about “monthly active user accounts”. The company seems to take into account the fact that the same user can open multiple accounts.

The overall performance last year in the summary of WeChat’s, 45 billion messages were sent on a daily basis on the platform, while 410 million audio and video calls were made every day. With 63 million users aged above 55 years old open their WeChat account at least once a month. The usage of WeChat has expanded by nearly 6 times compared to three years ago, with people “meeting in WeChat” instead of “meeting in person” now is the norm in China, said the Chinese company.

Although WeChat’s overall momentum slowed earlier but as said its user base saw considerable growth in 2018. This proved that its average daily users topped 1 billion, and it achieved the milestone of having over 1 billion monthly active accounts.

Apart from the Chinese market, WeChat is also popular in Southeast Asian countries, where Chinese enterprises and ethnically Chinese people have a notable presence.

It is more than just a messaging app in China as it incorporates other functions, like mobile payments and social networking and life services such as food delivery, ticket booking, and credit card payments.

WeChat’s popularity in benefited by favorable policy by the Chinese government that regulates and has banned the use of many overseas messaging and social media apps such as Facebook, and WhatsApp, and line which require a VPN to be accessed in China.