Tencent to take WeChat global

Models sit next to a WeChat advertisement at the 2013 Digital World Asia Expo in Beijing. Provided to China Daily

WeChat brings new weapon to mobile pay war

WeChat striving for global expansion

Tencent Holdings Ltd, China's largest publicly traded Internet company by market capitalization, will invest heavily to promote the international presence of WeChat, the company's popular mobile messaging application.

Pony Ma, founder and chief executive officer of Tencent, said on Wednesday the company will invest heavily in marketing and popularizing its WeChat services in international markets and boost the use of the payment function of the most widely used mobile social tool in China.

"We've enhanced our leading WeChat app from a communication tool to a multi-functional platform through initiatives such as smartphone games, official accounts and payment functions over the past year.

"All of our businesses are based on the WeChat platform, and we are confident that they will generate great returns in the long run," Ma said at Tencent's 2013 fourth quarter and annual earnings conference, where the Hong Kong-listed company announced that unaudited revenues in 2013 increased 38 percent from the previous year, reaching 60.44 billion yuan ($9.91 billion).

Ma didn't specify the amount of money Tencent plans to invest in WeChat. But Martin Lau, president of Tencent, said the company had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the internationalization of WeChat in 2013.

"About 100 million registered users of WeChat are based outside China. We will carry out more marketing events to further develop international markets in countries such as those in Southeast Asia," said Lau.