![]() Afraid of missing the next must-win market, Chinese tech giants tend to add ever more functions to get existing users hooked. In other words, there aren't a whole lot of web users who remain untapped. Almost every Chinese netizen already uses mobile apps designed by Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, according to market research firm QuestMobile. China now has nearly 1 billion internet users, representing about 70% of the country's total population. China's online population growth has slowed after a decade of mobile internet expansion. It's unsurprising that each popular Chinese mobile app is building a larger footprint, be it a short-video platform, a delivery service or an online marketplace. "It will also further build the cottage industries that come from supporting these apps." Why does every Chinese app want to be WeChat? Competition creates more innovation and generally more competitive rates and conditions for everyone involved except the tech giants," said Mark Tanner, managing director of Shanghai-based China Skinny, a marketing and research agency. "An app ecosystem that is more diverse is healthy for everyone. And a slew of tech companies are adding a mobile wallet feature. Douyin nemesis Kuaishou is already turning into a communication channel and building a "local life" business center. Meituan is said to be testing a group chat feature. This means China may end up with more than one mega app, each favored by different demographics.ĭouyin is hardly the only app that's expanding beyond its core business. Tech analysts can't agree on who will take over the throne from WeChat, but they anticipate that WeChat's status as the super app won't survive Beijing's ongoing antitrust drive. The question now is whether anyone can dethrone it.īy nature, Chinese tech companies do not feel encumbered by their "core competencies." And Chinese web users are accustomed to mega apps that do a lot of different things. In the past decade, WeChat has transformed human interaction in China and grown into an ecosystem for innovation, making it virtually the sole super-app most of China can't live without. Instead, it's one of several Chinese apps engaged in a quiet, high-stakes battle to become the next WeChat, a mega app that now has 1.1 billion monthly active users, 80% of China's total population. It's clear that the young Douyin is not content to be just an entertainment app, however lucrative that may be. Now Douyin has expanded into the so-called "local life services," taking on Meituan, a dominant player in this space, which offers a wide range of services meeting users' offline life needs, from food delivery to ticket booking. It's part of a pattern: Over the past few years, Douyin has beefed up its social network by adding features from livestreaming to ecommerce, from gaming to instant messaging, challenging existing dominant players in each vertical. ![]() Other players include JD.com's JD Pay, Baidu Wallet and Meituan Pay.In March, Douyin users in three Chinese cities discovered that the popular short-video app had quietly launched a new Groupon-like feature, a "group buying" feed that allowed users to order takeout, book hotels and reserve tickets and services. It provides a glimpse of what TikTok could eventually become, as Douyin started selling merchandise in 2017 and now operates a growing e-commerce operation where hundreds of millions of users shop on a daily basis.īyteDance's expansion comes as China's financial regulators are tightening oversight over financial technology firms, particularly companies such as Ant Group.Ĭhina's third-party payment sector is dominated by Alipay and WeChat Pay, with the former taking 55.39% of the total market in the second quarter of last year, according to market researcher Analysys. The company, which denies the allegation, has been in talks for months with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift such assets into a new entity.ĭouyin is the main revenue generator for ByteDance. Hezhong Yibao obtained a third-party payment license from the central bank in 2014.īyteDance has been ordered by the outgoing Trump administration to divest TikTok's U.S. Local Chinese media reported on Tuesday that Douyin Pay had been launched.īyteDance founder and Chief Executive Zhang Yiming built up the company's payment capability in China by acquiring Wuhan Hezhong Yibao Technology Co last year. ![]() Users of Douyin, which accumulated 600 million daily active users, previously could use Ant Group's Alipay and Tencent Holdings' WeChat Pay, the country's two ubiquitous third-party mobile payment channels, to buy virtual gifts for livestreamers or items from shops on the platform.
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