Chinese web giant Tencent revealed this afternoon that its WeChat messaging app now has 600 million monthly active users (MAUs). That’s a big step up from 549 million MAUs in Q1 2015, and up from 438 million one year ago at Q2 2014.
The number is reported in Tencent’s Q2 2015 financial earnings report.
Tencent didn’t provide any geographic breakdowns of where WeChat users are located, so it’s still a mystery how well WeChat is battling rival messaging apps like Line, Viber, or WhatsApp. “For WeChat, we continued to drive user engagement in selected overseas markets, especially emerging Asian markets,” said Tencent’s report.
Facebook’s non-identical twin messaging apps, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, have a respective 800 million and 700 million MAUs.
See: WeChat censorship report: 1.5% of posts get censored
Mobile payments push
Tencent pointed to pushing mobile payments on WeChat as one of its four priorities for the outgoing quarter. The WeChat Payments system can be used for online as well as in-store purchases, where it’s accepted.
The company said it’s aiming to drive more transactions by getting more people to bind a bank card to their WeChat Payment account in order for it to be used fully. It 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.
In terms of mobile gaming from titles linked to WeChat and QQ (its old-skool instant messaging app), Tencent pulled in RMB 4.5 billion (US$701.4 million) in revenue in the second quarter, up 11 percent year-on-year.
Amidst Tencent’s many other business areas related to advertising, there was no breakdown for how much money WeChat is coining from brand accounts or ads.
Tencent’s total Q2 revenues amounted to RMB 23.43 billion (US$3.8 billion), up 19 percent year-on-year – but that’s slightly below analysts’ estimates. Net profit stood at RMB 8.09 billion (US$1.32 billion).
Editing by Terence Lee
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