WeChat () is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. It has been described as having "an almost indispensable part of life in China".
To sign up for WeChat, a user may need to provide their bank card numbers or ask another WeChat user to scan their QR code. Accounts registered with telephone numbers in mainland China store data in mainland China and are governed by Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy. Non-Chinese WeChat users enjoy different, more liberal terms of service and a stricter privacy policy. WeChat users’ personal information (excluding users in mainland China) is stored in Singapore, or in Hong Kong for users in Hong Kong and Macau. WeChat users’ personal information may also be transferred to the Netherlands, Malaysia, and the United States. Personal information of international WeChat accounts can ultimately still be accessed remotely from mainland China by Tencent, and interactions between WeChat and Weixin users are subject to both services' policies. Activities on both versions may be monitored and shared with Chinese authorities on request. WeChat and Weixin censor politically sensitive topics and ban content deemed threatening to national security, social order, or state policy. Tencent regularly deletes LGBTQ official accounts without warnings. Tencent also blocks international WeChat accounts for content considered lewd material, violence, scams, rumors, or false ads. WeChat blocked or censored accounts of Americans and Canadians, many of whom were of Chinese ancestry, discussing Hong Kong. Account bans can significantly disrupt users' lives in China.
History By 2010, Tencent had already attained a massive user base with their desktop messenger app QQ. Recognizing smart phones were likely to disrupt this status quo, CEO Pony Ma sought to proactively invest in alternatives to their own QQ messenger app.
WeChat began as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010. The original version of the app was created by Allen Zhang, named "Weixin" () by Pony Ma, and launched in 2011. The user adoption of WeChat was initially very slow, with users wondering why key features were missing; however, after the release of the Walkie-talkie-like voice messaging feature in May of that year, growth surged. By 2012, when the number of users reached 100 million, Weixin was re-branded "WeChat" by President Martin Lau for the international market.
During a period of government support of e-commerce development—for example in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015)—WeChat also saw new features enabling payments and commerce in 2013, which saw massive adoption after their virtual Red envelope promotion for Chinese New Year 2014.
WeChat had over 889 million monthly active users by 2016, and as of 2019 WeChat's monthly active users had risen to an estimate of one billion. As of January 2022, it was reported that WeChat has more than 1.2 billion users. After the launch of WeChat payment in 2013, its users reached 400 million the next year, 90 percent of whom were in China. By comparison, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp had about one billion monthly active users in 2016 but did not offer most of the other services available on WeChat. For example, in Q2 2017, WeChat's revenues from social media advertising were about US$0.9 billion (RMB6 billion) compared with Facebook's total revenues of US$9.3 billion, 98% of which were from social media advertising. WeChat's revenues from its value-added services were US$5.5 billion.
By 2018, WeChat had been used by 93.5% of Chinese internet users. In that year, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018It's time for messaging apps to quit the bullshit numbers and tell us how many users are active . techinasia.com. 23 January 2014. Steven Millward. with over 1 billion monthly active users.
As of March 2026, WeChat + Weixin has a combined monthly users of 1.432B. From 2018-2021 their monthly users increased about 4.9% a year, and from 2021-2025 their monthly users increased about 2.8% year.
In response to a border dispute between India and China, WeChat was banned in India in June 2020 along with several other Chinese apps, including TikTok. U.S. president Donald Trump sought to ban U.S. "transactions" with WeChat through an executive order but was blocked by a preliminary injunction issued in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in September 2020. Joe Biden officially dropped Trump's efforts to ban WeChat in the U.S. in June 2021.
Features WeChat, has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. It has been described as having "an almost indispensable part of life in China". Due to its central part of Chinese life, a Chinese person having their WeChat account banned can cause a significant disruption to their life.
Messaging WeChat provides a variety of features including text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video calls and conferencing, video games, photograph and video sharing, as well as location sharing. Published on 9 August 2016 WeChat also allows users to exchange contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth, as well as providing various features for contacting people at random if desired (if people are open to it). It can also integrate with other social networking services such as Facebook and Tencent QQ. Photographs may also be embellished with filters and captions, and automatic translation service is available and could also translate the conversation during messaging.
WeChat supports different instant messaging methods, including text messages, voice messages, walkie talkie, and stickers. Users can send previously saved or live pictures and videos, profiles of other users, coupons, lucky money packages, or current GPS locations with friends either individually or in a group chat.
WeChat also provides a message recall feature to allow users to recall and withdraw information (e.g. images, documents) that are sent within 2 minutes in a conversation.
WeChat also provides a voice-to-text feature that brings convenience when it is not convenient to listen to voice messages, as well as the basic ability to recognize emojis based on different tones of voice.
A distance sensing feature is implemented in WeChat. It has the ability to activate the receivers' hold-to-talk function when the phone was brought in close proximity to the ear. After the receiver was held at a certain distance from the ear, the sensor would then proceed to automatically disable the phone speakers. This feature eliminates the risk of the user's voice messages being inadvertently broadcast to the general public.
Official Accounts WeChat users can register as an official account (), which enables them to push feeds to subscribers, interact with subscribers, and provide subscribers with services. Users can also create an official account, which fall under service, subscription, or enterprise accounts. Once users as individuals or organizations set up a type of account, they cannot change it to another type. By the end of 2014, the number of WeChat official accounts had reached 8 million. Official accounts of organizations can apply to be verified (cost 300 RMB or about US$45). Official accounts can be used as a platform for services such as hospital pre-registrations, or credit card service. To create an official account, the applicant must register with Chinese authorities, which discourages "foreign companies". In April 2022, WeChat announced that it will start displaying the location of users in China every time they post on a public account. Meanwhile, overseas users on public accounts will also display the country based on their IP address.
Moments
"Moments" () is WeChat's brand name for its social feed of friends' updates. "Moments" is an interactive platform that allows users to post images, text, and short videos taken by users. It also allows users to share articles and music (associated with QQ Music or other web-based music services). Friends in the contact list can like the content and leave comments, functioning similarly to a private social network.
In 2017 WeChat had a policy of a maximum of two advertisements per day per Moments user.
Privacy in WeChat works by groups of friends: only the friends from the user's contact are able to view their Moments' contents and comments. The friends of the user will only be able to see the likes and comments from other users only if they are in a mutual friend group. For example, friends from high school are not able to see the comments and likes from friends from a university. When users post their moments, they can separate their friends into a few groups, and they can decide whether this Moment can be seen by particular groups of people. Contents posted can be set to "Private", and then only the user can view it. Unlike Weibo or Instagram, these are only shared to the user's friends. These are unlikely to go viral.
Recently, WeChat launched a new feature allowing users to pin posts to Moments, so that others can re-watch them, enabling easier tracking of important posts and permanent display of posts.
WeChat Pay
Users who have provided bank account information may use the app to pay bills, order goods and services, transfer money to other users, and pay in stores if the stores have a WeChat payment option. Vetted third parties, known as "official accounts", offer these services by developing lightweight "apps within the app". Users can link their Chinese bank accounts, as well as Visa, MasterCard and JCB.
WeChat Pay, officially referred to as Weixin Pay () in China and WeChat Pay HK in Hong Kong, is a digital wallet service incorporated into WeChat, which allows users to perform mobile payments and send money between contacts.
Although users receive immediate notification of the transaction, WeChat Pay is not an instant payment instrument, because the funds transfer between counterparts is not immediate. The settlement time depends on the payment method chosen by the customer.
All WeChat users have their own WeChat Pay accounts. Users can acquire a balance by linking their WeChat account to their debit cards, or by receiving money from other users. For non-Chinese users of Weixin Pay, an additional identity verification process of providing a photo of a valid ID is required before certain functions of Weixin Pay become available. Users who link their credit card can only make payments to vendors, and cannot use this to top up WeChat balances. WeChat Pay can be used for digital payments, as well as payments from participating vendors. As of March 2016, WeChat Pay had over 300 million users.