Tencent’s WeChat ties up with digital wallets of China’s Big Telcos in latest breach of mobile payments ‘walled garden’

Tencent Holdings has teamed up with China's top three telecom companies, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. This partnership means that people can now use their digital wallets from these telecoms to make payments through WeChat by scanning QR codes. The WeChat team at Tencent announced that they've been working towards making their payment system more open and connected with different organizations and banks. nnThis move is part of a bigger change in China where the government wants to break down the barriers that big tech companies have built. These barriers, known as 'walled gardens,' have kept users within one ecosystem, not allowing them to link to other services easily. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has been guiding internet companies to change this and make their services more accessible to others. WeChat Pay has already integrated with UnionPay, China's main bank card service, allowing mini programs on WeChat to use UnionPay's payment method. nnHowever, there's still a limitation as direct transfers between WeChat Pay and Alipay, the two dominant mobile payment platforms in China, are not possible. Alipay tried a workaround for transferring funds to WeChat Pay, but it was limited. The head of China's digital currency efforts has called for WeChat Pay, Alipay, and bank apps to standardize their QR codes for the digital yuan. WeChat has started supporting the digital yuan in its wallet, short-video, and mini-program features. Ant, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, is also involved in the digital currency space and owns the South China Morning Post.