Tencent’s WeChat Pay gearing up to Launch in India, likely to be in May-June: Report

The digital payment services have seen significant growth in the country over the past few years. The growth has been substantial after demonization happened back in 2016. Several digital payment service players have come into play ever since. There are already a plethora of digital payment services in India – the prominent ones are PayTm, Google Pay, PhonePe and BHIM. And, recently Xiaomi has also launched its Mi Pay services in India. If you haven’t noticed already these all support UPI-based (Unified Payment Interface) services in the country, which was also launched by the Government back in 2016.

After Xiaomi, a new China-based player is all set to join the bandwagon of these digital payment services. According to Entrackr, WeChat – widely popular in China is all set to foray into the digital platform in the country with its WeChat Pay service. Back in 2012, the Tencent-based WeChat had been launched as a messaging platform in the country but hadn’t been as popular as WhatsApp. To recall, WhatsApp also has its WhatsApp Payments feature as well, which was launched by the Facebook-owned company last year as well.

The report further confirms that senior officials of Tencent as well as the country’s National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) officials have met a couple of weeks ago for acquiring a license of the upcoming fully fledged payments app, i.e., WeChat Pay. The report further reveals that WeChat Pay would be, as stated, UPI-based and has reportedly collaborated with three Indian banks that include – Axis Bank, HDFC and ICICI Bank. And, seemingly Tencent wants to have its unique @wechat UPI handle as well, states the report.

WeChat Pay is one of the popular payment gateway systems in China and is on its way to India with the same name and is expected to launch in the midst of this year, preferably between May-June. Bear in mind, Tencent is the same company that owns the hugely popular game PUBG, which took as a storm in mobile gaming particularly in India as well.

The resource-intensive game PUBG offers multiple in-app items purchase within the app. And, WeChat Pay integration for purchasing those items seems to be a possibility from Tencent to take on the aggressively competitive digital payments services like PayTm and Google Pay. So, what do you think of these new UPI-based payment gateway platforms, will you be using it if it integrates into PUBG? Do let us know in the comments below and stay tuned to PhoneRadar for more such interesting updates.

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