On the 7th anniversary of Tenpay(the online payment service by Tencent), the GM of the company announced that the company would start collaboration with Tencent’s IM service Weixin and its B2C arm. This 7-year-old company (founded in April 2005) currently has over 190 million users, partnering with about 400,000 merchants covering games, travels, B2C, insurance, steel, funds and cross-border industries. The services it provides include installment, entrustment, Epos payment, quick pay, and in 2011 its online trading volume reached over RMB 450billion.
On this special occasion, manager Lai Zhiming pointed out five specific moves that will be taken soon by Tenpay: 1. Get available to more Tencent’s core services; 2. Deepen partnership with Weixin; 3. Dig in the payment market; 4. Expand overseas O2O payment; 5. Connect with QQ Caibei’s platform.
The second one easily caught our eyes, for Weixin is such a popular star these days that everyone would like to take a share with it. This month, Tencent leader Pony Ma posted on his Weibo that Weixin users had already surpassed 200million. Actually the great thing about partnering with Weixin is more than its huge user base, the open platform and multifunction of Weixin can create incredible opportunities for Tenpay.
According to Lai, Tenpay will first combine itself with some basic functions of Weixin including “Shake-It”(Adding friends by shaking the phones at the same time), “QR Code Scanning”(Originally used for adding friends on Weixin) and “Wei Life”(Discount platform for life services). He introduced that after the collaboration, users could transfer to friends by “Shake-It” instead of inputting the long account number digit by digit. Also, purchasing and payment could be much easier through the “QR Code Scanning”, and the same thing could also be realized on Tencent’s “Wei Life” platform where various merchants discounts are offered.
“Weixin+Tenpay=A new payment concept. We are trying to create an ideal that you can do anything with your phone. In the future Tenpay will develop more payment methods and functions accordingly. ” said Lai.
Pony Ma said on the 2012 China Internet Conference recently that “The opportunity for the mobile internet is O2O.” The QR Scanning seems to be the key entrance for a O2O mode.