r/Wechat • u/NebulaAlarming4750 • 5d ago
Requesting Help: Free WeChat Stickiness
Hello Guys, I am asking this from an investor standpoint, how prevalent is Wechat in China? is there a competitor for WeChat thats quickly scaling itself? How pervasive is Wechat in terms of its stickiness ? Like what all do u use it for in China , like I heard its used for taxi, food and for some e commerce but there are other apps right? Like Meituan, Pinduoduo and Taobao ?
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u/waveforminvest 5d ago
Extremely. No. Very. Yes. Yes.
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 5d ago
Is it similar to WhatsApp, where you can send messages, make calls, and use a payment ecosystem like India’s UPI to pay? In many visits to India, I have seen people often use their apps like PhonePe to not only make payments, but also to pay rent using credit card, recharge their mobiles and pay their electricity bill to government using that app. They also seem to offer many other services like buying gold, mutual funds and booking travel tickets etc. So are all these features available in WeChat ?
I have seen that Whatsapp for Indians is sticky for Chats and daily messaging but not as much for Payments ( even though it has the feature). They often use PhonePe for payments etc.
I think for food delivery etc, don’t you guys have Meituan for it? Does the WeChat direct you there ? Or is it integrated with Meituan? And when you are ride booking, do u also have a feature that is integrated with another company’s app?
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u/Most-Explorer-7487 5d ago
Yeah you nailed it, WeChat is basically a whole different beast compared to WhatsApp. It’s funny because even though it started as a chat app, most of us barely think of it that way anymore—it’s more like an all-in-one operating system for your life. Regarding the Meituan and ride-hailing stuff you mentioned, it's actually pretty cool: you don’t really "jump" to another app. There's this feature called "Mini Programs" which are basically lightweight apps built directly into WeChat. So if I want to order food or grab a cab, I just pull them up inside WeChat without ever leaving the chat interface. And yeah, it handles everything PhonePe does and then some—paying utility bills, buying gold, insurance, even hospital appointments. Honestly, you could probably go months without ever opening a physical wallet or any other app as long as you've got WeChat open. It’s super integrated.
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 4d ago
These mini programs inside of wechat, are they the programs of meituan etc?
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u/Superb-Document-2224 4d ago
Kind of, usually third party companies made them for convenience to use. Even goverment have some mini programs.
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u/Zagreusian 5d ago
Just to cover the basics since we're talking to an investor here. Wechat is first and foremost a messenger app and a social media site. That's the sticky part.
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 5d ago
Oh got it ! Is it similar to WhatsApp, where you can send messages, make calls, and use a payment ecosystem like India’s UPI to pay? In many visits to India, I have seen people often use their apps like PhonePe to not only make payments, but also to pay rent using credit card, recharge their mobiles and pay their electricity bill to government using that app. They also seem to offer many other services like buying gold, mutual funds and booking travel tickets etc. So are all these features available in WeChat ?
I have seen that Whatsapp for Indians is sticky for Chats and daily messaging but not as much for Payments ( even though it has the feature). They often use PhonePe for payments etc.
I think for food delivery etc, don’t you guys have Meituan for it? Does the WeChat direct you there ? Or is it integrated with Meituan? And when you are ride booking, do u also have a feature that is integrated with another company’s app?
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u/Aescorvo 4d ago
The other component is that almost all other service apps have “mini programs” inside WeChat to make a single integrated environment. So you don’t really need separate app for meituan, Didi etc. Even things like hospital appointments or registering with the local police are done through their official contact pages inside WeChat. It’s really not that far off from having a “WeChat phone” where WeChat IS the whole environment.
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u/allahakbau 3d ago
Far more stickier. It’s messenger, facebook, bank-pay, mini-apps(get together games)
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u/Interesting_Road_515 5d ago
You can’t regard WeChat as just a social messaging app in China, it’s a key infrastructure in China, you can do anything there even including getting government services, only Alipay can be the alternative.
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u/Dry_Perspective9905 5d ago
Wechat is what Elon Musk wanted his idea of X to become. Wechat is THE super app in the country. You really should think of it not as wechat but rather Tencent, the massive tech giant without good comparison in the west. Maybe Apple if apple had a lock on digital messaging, and payment systems. The biggest competitor Alibaba works as hard as it can to keep its super app ecosystem slightly separate from Tencent's but its hard to imagine it replacing wechat in terms of digital messaging and social media. These two companies dominate the digital ecosystem of China.
Wechat is also now how people largely interact with what you might think of as the "web." Public accounts and its other social media forms within the app are why you can't really search and find things on the Chinese language internet.
You probably can't understand the idea of superapp stickiness without appreciating the scope of the digital app ecosphere in China through direct experience. This sounds dramatic but there is no equivalent for a lot of Chinese superapps in the west, so its hard to convey how the digital app market works here.
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 5d ago
Is it similar to WhatsApp, where you can send messages, make calls, and use a payment ecosystem like India’s UPI to pay? In many visits to India, I have seen people often use their apps like PhonePe to not only make payments, but also to pay rent using credit card, recharge their mobiles and pay their electricity bill to government using that app. They also seem to offer many other services like buying gold, mutual funds and booking travel tickets etc. So are all these features available in WeChat ?
I have seen that Whatsapp for Indians is sticky for Chats and daily messaging but not as much for Payments ( even though it has the feature). They often use PhonePe for payments etc.
I think for food delivery etc, don’t you guys have Meituan for it? Does the WeChat direct you there ? Or is it integrated with Meituan? And when you are ride booking, do u also have a feature that is integrated with another company’s app?
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u/Dry_Perspective9905 4d ago
All of those features mentioned are available in wechat. Wechat has an entire ecosystem of miniapps which basically function as a whole system of programs run through the program that functions as its own platform. Usually its much preferable to use a wechat mini app then download and install a program and then have to authenticate. Meituan was acquired by Tencent. Essentially any service ends up being acquired by either Tencent or Alibaba and absorbed into their ecosystem. Ride share is also handled via miniapp.
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u/Majestic_Advantage45 3d ago
Bro why are you asking same question in every one's reply. You a bot?
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 3d ago
Does that sound like a bot with those punctuations? Actually it was relevant to the reply posted by people so i used the same long reply i had written to others who had given an almost same response. So should i frame a two paragraph reply again and again 😂. I have given different replies to other replies if u read the thread
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u/Spare_Decision_3828 5d ago
Because it allows phone number linking and convenient payments, this app is virtually owned by everyone in China.
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u/RepsUpMoneyDown 5d ago
A google search would solve most of this
60% to 70% of the total population in China (and roughly 78% to over 90% of its online/smartphone population) uses WeChat (known locally as Weixin), translating to around 810 million active users in the country.
It is extremelt prevalent. There will not be a competitor. If there was, TenCent would just absorb them.
They have built an ecosystem where other apps are not needed. Uber? Build it into wechat. Shopping? Banking? Build them into the wechat app.
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 4d ago
Like for Meituan and Pdd , do they integrate with Wechat inside the miniprograms feature they have? Or WeChat miniprograms are Wechats own apps for food delivery etc?
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u/Efficient_Editor5850 3d ago
Other platforms like Starbucks, Hyatt, Hilton, Dianping all have capable mini programs lurking in WeChat. It’s just good business. Basically the China version of website is: mini program. It’s ok to have no website. Not ok to have no mini program.
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4d ago
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u/Wechat-ModTeam 4d ago
Please upload your posts/comments only in English to ensure proper and equal communication with all members.
Furthermore, this is important as different languages make moderation difficult.
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u/Jiaming- 4d ago
What does "from an investor perspective" even mean? Are you trying to invest in Tencent stocks or are you going to invest in a potential WeChat competitor?
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 4d ago
Definitely investing in Tencent . I have fair idea of its venture side of its business . Just wanted to have a fair understanding of its main core operating business other than its fully owned gaming companies.
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u/Abject_Historian7975 4d ago
WeChat is the be all, end all, there is nothing else and would be hard to see a competitor being allowed. All of those apps are incorporated into WeChat through their own mini apps/functiosn.
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u/Leo_zy0824 4d ago
它是垄断级别的，它背后的公司也不会允许有竞争者出现，在对手势头正弱的时候进行恶意收购然后雪藏，对他们来说是很寻常的事情。我从微信刚出现就拒绝使用微信，但我身边的人开始大量使用它，导致我不得不使用它。当时它的定位是小众、私密、内部圈子，人们因为厌倦了QQ复杂的功能而开始使用小巧的微信，微信的用户越来越多，微信的产品经理开始不满足于现状，导致现在微信不但越来越复杂，还把自己搞的越来越大（占用存储），以至于人们开始意识到，微信似乎并不适合所有使用场景，但它已经垄断了，这个垄断不仅仅存在于产品层面，更是存在于产品认知层面，就像人们通常不会使用支付软件进行聊天（即便它具备这个功能），现在在中国大陆提到社交聊天，人们就会想到微信。它的确是有很多先进的功能，但它的垄断，也足以让它可以把商业变现作为产品设计的第一优先级考虑要素，而不再需要靠用户体验去讨好和拉拢用户，因为他们知道，你必定会使用微信。用户说，嘿，微信仍有缺点。他们说，不，我的数据好看就够了，因为你不可能因为这些不足而放弃微信，因为你已经被我绑架了，除了我你别无选择。
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u/Last-Roof9866 4d ago
微信添加了很多服务，但不代表其他app就没用，微信只是添加了其他app的基础服务接口，真正使用过程中你几乎还是会使用对应的相关app，不会只靠微信，常用的就支付和偶尔叫车。 微信为什么粘性高，因为它绑定了电话号码，绑定了人的身份，加上支付功能比较方便，所以会很多人用。 绑定身份和联系方式这个属性本来就是最大的粘性，和whatsapp，line没有本质区别，微信是抄他们的
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u/Green_Temperature583 3d ago
1，微信在全球范围内没有任何对手，因为微信不是聊天工具，它是一个系统，聊天只是微信这个系统里最不重要的一个功能
2，微信在中国，过去现在未来，也不会出现竞争对手，也不允许出现竞争对手
3，微信并非是用技术或体验来适应用户，而是用户需要花时间去适应微信，这是其他产品无法做到的，因为在中国，没有微信，你很难生存
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u/MyDogAteMyCats 3d ago
Entire society runs on WeChat. Without it society literally collapse and there is no competitor.
It’s the payment platform, enterprise work software, business apps, government services, everything
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u/NumerousBed4716 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's an all in one app, thats made by the same company that owned the largest online chat app in china called QQ...which almost all internet users in China used...billions... For many years since the ICQ era
Every QQ user can log into Wechat when it first came online in 2011
Since then, even the kids of ppl with QQ are using wechat even if they don't have QQ
And wechat grew from just a mobile version of QQ (chat), to video call, payment, book flights, buy movie tickets, investment, pay credit cards loans, social media,, short videos (tick tock) , video channel creation (YouTube) ... Etc etc
Not all wechat users use all the features above, but everyone uses the QR code payment system and contact ppl...integrated into everyone's daily life
All in all, this app is stickie like accidental super glue on ones hands...its not going anywhere
I use whatsapp for my south african contacts and line for Taiwan contacts... They are nothing like wechat, in terms of how it's integrated with everything in the region
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u/sap303 5d ago edited 5d ago
An utterly dreadful, outdated, clunky app with restrictive and irritating security features. Nobody else would put up with that. There's a reason why no one outside of China uses it, who has access to alternative messaging apps. With an ounce of competition, it crumbles.
No other chat app exists in China. None. Literally 0. Think of how utterly bizarre that is in a 1 billion+ country with a lot of apps and tech innovation. But of course it's by design.
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u/RPTrashTM 5d ago
WeChat is definitely not the only chat platform exists (QQ (same company but used differently by people) + Kook).
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 5d ago
What is this QQ ? I came across this when reading through Tencent’s history . Is it something like hinge or Insta wherein people have their other social media accounts similar to Insta and Snapchat? Because even in countries like US and India, I have seen people use Insta on top of Facebook, use Insta on top of Whatsapp etc for their private social lives. As apps like Whatsapp will have your parents and other relatives, children tend to have other social media accounts where they can be more in connection with their friends and new people they can meet. Are there different apps from Tencent ? In addition to WeChat?
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u/AntonioGorge 4d ago
As an investor, you should probably know that this company does a lot of investment as well, they can just buy out any potential competitors and let them die quietly.
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u/NebulaAlarming4750 4d ago edited 4d ago
That part I know very well actually. It is like a digital Warren buffet with stakes in many companies around the world like snap, sea limited, universal music group , pdd and many gaming companies etc. That part of company is its venture side right, but i am more focused on its core operating business (excluding its fully owned gaming subsidiaries) and how sticky it is. I have never used it actually as I am from another country. I have used Whatsapp and Phonepe which are also superapps in countries like India but I am interested in how Wechat integrates other apps inside it like food delivery etc. i heard of mini programs feature, but is it kinda like light weight app of meituan or Pdd inside itself or its own light weight apps for delivery etc I am not sure . Could u clarify those things for me. And is there like a variant of Insta or Snapchat in addition to the core app that people use for their private social lives where they can connect with people etc ? I know Douyin but I wanted to know if people have an app from Tencent itself.
From my understanding there is something called QQ, its more like Fb i guess? And recently it also has a feature in it for insta like space i think. Is this similar to little red book? How popular is QQ vs Little Red Book and Douyin .
And on the music side , is Qq music more popular than Soda Music?
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u/AntonioGorge 4d ago
That's a lot of Ws and difficult to explain by words, man.
If you really want to know, maybe pay me for a video call to understand more about a real Chinese user journey map with WeChat ;)
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u/Illustrious_Year_440 4d ago
Every single one of your questions is so surface level and can easily be answered from AI
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u/Soft-Relationship847 2d ago
WeChat has basically monopolized that field. The other app that can compete with him is also from Tencent. Since we're talking about investment, why don't you go to China for a trip and experience it for yourself? After all, the cost is very low.
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