What is WeChat Pay?

In 2011, the leader of China internet technologies Tencent presented a free social network WeChat. Only after a few years, it has reached more than 400 million users worldwide.

Nowadays, the number of active users is more than 1 billion. This application is widely spread not only in China, among the covered countries are Japan, the USA, European countries.

WeChat Pay is an e-wallet service, embed in a personal account of each user of WeChat application that allows providing mobile payments in online stores, and share funds between accounts. Customers can top up cell phones, tie WeChat personal accounts with debit cards, or get transfers from other users.

Those clients, who tie credit cards can only make payments, not to top up a balance.

WeChat Pay is also gaining popularity in Western Europe and the USA. Last year, Western Union brought global money transfers to the forefront, giving WeChat users in the United States the ability to distribute funds within 200 countries and territories through a messaging service.

WeChat Pay support major currencies including but not limited to GBP, HKD, USD, JPY, CAD, AUD, EUR, NZD, KRW settlement

WeChat payment solutions

1. Payment by payment code. The user opens his WeChat account on a page with a personal payment code (containing an 18-digit code or QR code), a merchant, by reading this code, declares the amount determined by him from the customer’s account.
   1. The buyer does not see the amount until it is debited.
   2. Having access to the payment code, a fraudulent seller can debit any amount from the customer’s account at any time without notifications.
2. Native Payments. Opposite to the first method, based on the fact that the seller generates a QR code with his data and the order amount, and the buyer, through his Wechat, scans it and confirms the payment. The advantages are distinct:
   1. The customer sees the full amount before payment.
   2. The final decision is up to a customer — they can refuse payment, even though they scanned the code. They also decide whether to scan or not.
3. APP payments, or third party application payments (mobile).
4. Transactions through payment aggregators.

Of course, WeChat Pay is still inferior to Apple Pay and other Western payment aggregates in online payments abroad, since the application is aimed mainly at Chinese tourists. However, if you compare the number of mobile payment users in China and Europe and the USA, the apparent leader will be, namely, China.