WeChat Payment to be available at Wangfujing Department Stores

Beijing Wangfujing Department Store (Group) Co., Ltd. (SH:600859) announced strategic partnership with Tencent. The first move is WeChat Payment will be available for shopping at Wangfujing’s flagship store in Beijing from Feb 14.

Later on Wangfujing will leverage WeChat Official Account platform and Tencent, in turn, will support it with data, technical support and other marketing resources, according to the statement.

WeChat official account enables a  brick-and-mortar store to set up mobile presence, interacting with customers, launching online loyalty programs or even selling goods directly, taking payments with WeChat payment solution.

Micro-life, the division of Tencent for local lifestyle services, has been working on moving offline merchants onto WeChat platform since last year. It managed to have Rainbow department store chain on board before this Wangfujing deal.

Wangfujing is a better known department store brand in China than Raibow. Since the coming Feb 14th isn’t only the Valentine’s day that has been widely celebrated in China but also the Chinese Lantern Festival for this year, it is expected there will be big sales then. More Wangfujing stores will support WeChat Payment later.