The online payment platform Shenzhen Tenpay Co Ltd said on Tuesday it will provide mobile payment services for weixin users.
The service will be available in the fourth quarter, said Jim Lai, general manager of Tenpay, which was founded by Tencent Holdings Ltd.
The move is believed to be Tencent's first step to commercialize weixin, a smartphone-based social networking application that was also developed by Tencent and had accumulated 200 million users in 14 months.
"Mobile payment will be a vital sector for Tenpay, and the linkup with weixin will help us add users," Lai said.
Competition between online payment platforms is about to heat up as more players enter the market, he said.
This month, Tencent CEO Pony Ma pledged to further develop mobile Internet-related services and indicated weinxin would be an important gateway for Tencent to tap into the sector.
Turnover of third-party payment services nationwide hit 94 million yuan ($14.87 million) in the second quarter, 23 percent more than the first quarter, according to Analysys International.
China Daily-Agencies
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 
