In addition to nine categories of mobile payments that are currently available on the platform, WeChat is going to add a fashion channel for its payment service in cooperation with social e-commerce network Meilishuo (source in Chinese).
The service, which is expected to be launched this month, will recommend and support the payment of fashion products from Meilishuo merchants to WeChat users, enabling Meilishuo to lure bigger user metrics.
Meilishuo partnered up with WeChat as one of the first adopters of WeChat platform as early as April 2012. But the cooperation is focused on sharing shopping contents to WeChat friends back then.
Meilishuo built a in-house trading platform last year, which recorded 45 million yuan ($7.42 million) of monthly turnover as of Jan this year, disclosed the firm’s CEO Xu Yirong in an open letter.
The monthly and daily users of Meilishuo reached 45.79 million and 2.54 million on PC in December last year, according to data from Enfodesk. Meilishuo’s mobile app saw 60 million downloads, according to the company. The monthly active users reached 9.28 million as of Dec. 2013, according to data from Enfodesk eCDC (data source).
Tencent, the operator of WeChat, led the Series D financing in Meilishuo in 2012. The company has received a combined $30 million investments from GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital, Bluerun Ventures and Zero2IPO in previous rounds of funding.
Xu Yirong added that the company planned to revamp its group-purchasing and special sales channels in February, as well as invest heavily in branding.
image credit: Meilishuo