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Tencent eyes WeChat as new revenue source

Chinese internet company Tencent (0700.HKG) plans to integrate its third-party payment service TenPay into its popular mobile chatting application WeChat within two months, part of its aim to cash in on the app’s more than 200 million global users, The Wall Street Journal reported. WeChat users will be able to make payments at stores by scanning QR codes. This will not only mean TenPay can earn money from users’ online and offline purchase, but will also help WeChat attract more vendor advertisers, analysts said. “It’s about time Internet application providers started doing this, because, from a telecom point of view, smartphones are becoming very cheap, so the penetration is already quite high in the major cities,” said Jefferies (JEF.NYSE) analyst Cynthia Meng. TenPay fell behind Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s Alipay to hold 20% of China’s third-party payment market by transaction volume in the third quarter of the year, according to research firm Analysys International.

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