- WeChat’s cross-border payment platform is now available in Malaysia
- The Southeast Asian country is WeChat’s first Asian market outside of mainland China and Hong Kong
- Tencent, the company that owns the platform, notes that Malaysia offers a great opportunity for growth
China’s leading messaging app WeChat just launched its digital payment platform, WeChat Pay, in Malaysia.
Malaysians who use the app can now make international money transfers to friends and family in China, Hong Kong and South Africa. While WeChat’s payment platform is not essentially a cross-border payment option, this localised app can make paying for purchases to offline merchants a lot easier, Tencent representatives say.
The Southeast Asian country is WeChat’s first Asian destination outside of Hong Kong and the mainland.
According to S.Y. Lau, Senior Vice President at Tencent: “Malaysia is a vibrant market”.
He added: “Technology-savvy Malaysians are embracing a digital lifestyle, and to meet this shift, the payment experience has to evolve. Bringing WeChat Pay to Malaysia is our response to this.”
The company has not yet revealed how many users WeChat Pay currently has, but the fact that mobile phones have surpassed the country’s population by over 10 million is indicative of this opportunity, experts say.
WeChat is reportedly working on partnerships with Malaysian banks for its payment platform to take off. Its expansion into the Southeast Asian nation comes at a time when Tencent is experimenting with blockchain technology to make it easier for WeChat Pay users to get paid what they are owed.
In early August, WeChat piloted a reimbursement feature that enables employees to send details about work-related purchases to their employers. According to Tencent executives, the blockchain platform can make the reimbursement process less awkward. The capability can even cut down on fraud within organisations.
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