Tencent seeking to boost WeChat Wallet use in Hong Kong

Tencent Holdings aims to make its WeChat Wallet mobile payment service available for more Hongkongers in 2017 as it ratchets up competition to win over brick-and-mortar business partners in the city.

Pony Ma Huateng, chairman and chief executive officer of Tencent, said the company is seeking to team up with more retailers in Hong Kong, part of an effort to boost local usage of its WeChat Wallet, a mobile payment service popular with hundreds of millions of users in the mainland.

“Department stores, supermarkets and convenient stores are our top targets,” he told the South China Morning Post at the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing on Sunday.

SaSa became the first Hong Kong retailer to allow mainlanders to use WeChat Wallet to pay for their purchases via smartphone when it rolled out the service in 2015. But Tencent has been trying to win over Hongkongers who still prefer credit cards to the smartphone-enabled payments.

Ma said the existing exclusive partnership deals inked between Alipay, the mobile payment tool backed by Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding, and some Hong Kong retailers are reasons that have stopped WeChat Wallet’s expansion in Hong Kong.

“But most of the exclusive deals are about to end,” he said.