China’s WeChat app crosses one billion account mark

BEIJING: China’s ubiquitous WeChat social media platform has crossed the one billion accounts mark as its messaging, game and shopping services attract more and more users.

The symbolic threshold was announced by Pony Ma, the chief executive of its parent company Tencent, on the sidelines of China’s parliamentary session on Monday. The all-in-one app, known as Weixin in China, is a daily necessity for most Chinese, bringing together messaging, social media, mobile payment, games, news and other services.

Half of WeChat users spend more than 90 minutes a day on the app. In its last company results in September, Tencent had reported that WeChat users had opened 980 million accounts, a 16 percent increase from the previous year.

"WeChat’s worldwide monthly active users have surpassed the critical one billion mark," said Ma, who is a delegate at the two-week session of the Communist Party-controlled National People’s Congress.

"In the future we hope to use technological innovation to push forward the next developmental step of reform and opening," Ma said. He was referring to China’s economic liberalisation policy that has fuelled four decades of breakneck economic growth.

Although Ma said WeChat’s monthly active users had crossed the one billion threshold, a company spokesman told AFP he was referring to its total number of accounts. Still, the one billion figure indicates the huge user base which Tencent has built up both inside and outside China for the app.