Tencent's WeChat mini program daily users in China grew 13per cents to 450 million last year

 

GUANGZHOU, China: Tencent Holdings' Weixin, China's dominant messaging app which is known as WeChat outside the country, said on Thursday that average daily active users for its mini-programs hit 450 million in 2021.

That represents a 13per cent increase from a year earlier - much slower than the 33per cent growth in 2020, according to previous figures released by Tencent.

The mini-programs, which look and operate much like apps on Apple Inc's iOS and Google's Android operating systems but are fewer data-intensive, are key to Tencent's efforts to build its e-commerce operations.

Weixin added that the number of active mini-programs operated by overseas merchants increased 268per cent over the past two years, with total transaction volumes via those programs growing 897per cent over the same period of time.

More than 700 million users have used Weixin mini-programs tailored to combat the pandemic such as ones used to book COVID-19 tests used by authorities, it also said at its annual developers’ conference in Guangzhou.

Tencent saw revenue climb 13per cent in the third quarter, the slowest growth since it went public in 2004, hurt by a regulatory crackdown that has impacted its games pipeline as well as its app updates.