Tencent to integrate TenPay with WeChat

Chinese Internet giant Tencent is looking to tie its payment service TenPay to its messaging application WeChat, as it looks to capitalize on the latter's growing global appeal. 

The Wall Street Journal Monday cited Lai Zhiming, the manager of Tencent's third-party payment platform TenPay, as saying it will be adding payment services to WeChat within two months. This would allow users to scan codes at stores to purchase products, he added.

He did not, however, say how the company intends to integrate its service with the messaging app--which was launched in 2011 and has accrued more than 200 million global users since.

This move will help the Chinese Web giant profit from its WeChat service, also known as Weixin in China, given that it does not run ads on the platform currently. Integrating a payment service will enable users to make online and in-store purchases, the report noted.

WeChat has been making strides in other Asian markets outside China, with subscriber growth increasing in places such as Indonesia and Malaysia. In Malaysia, specifically, the app has achieved 400 percent subscriber growth since its launch in June this year even while support for Bahasa Melayu is not yet available, Tencent stated in a separate statement.