Popular messaging app hits 600 million users

folarin okunola

August 13, 2015 6:15 PM

WeChat messaging app now has 600 million monthly active users (MAUs) which is a big step up from 549 million MAUs in Q1 2015

WeChat has been steadily growing since it was introduced as China's answer to WhatsApp

According to various media reports, Chinese web giant Tencent revealed yesterday that its WeChat messaging app now has 600 million monthly active users (MAUs) which is a big step up from 549 million MAUs in Q1 2015, and up from 438 million one year ago at Q2 2014.

According to Tech in Asia, Tencent didn’t provide any geographic breakdowns of where WeChat users are located, so how well WeChat is battling rival messaging apps like Line, Viber, or WhatsApp is still largely a mystery. “For WeChat, we continued to drive user engagement in selected overseas markets, especially emerging Asian markets,” said Tencent’s report.

Tencent stated that pushing mobile payments on WeChat as one of its four priorities for the outgoing quarter.

The company said it aims to drive more transactions by getting more people to link a bank card to their WeChat Payment account in order for it to be used fully. Tencent added that “increasing popularity of person-to-person transactions on mobile devices, and the growing number of partner companies adopting our payment solutions” were further priorities for the messaging app.

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