There are currently 963 million monthly active users of WeChat, according to Li Wan, Public Relations Manager of Tencent. WeChat, Chinese social media mobile application software developed by Tencent is a messaging and calling app that allows users to easily connect with family & friends across countries. It's the all-in-one communications app for text (SMS/MMS), voice and video calls, Moments, photo sharing, and games.

The application has 200, 000 developers and over 600 million people using it for financial transaction.

The WeChat Pay app, according to Li continues to create a positive impact in the lives of users. WeChat Pay and Smart Life apps which came into effect in 2014 have helped 90% of users in China transact mobile payment for services like car parking, bus service, medical services, food and goods purchase, etc.

Li assured that they hope to improve on their services so as to leap from WeChat’s current one billion users threshold. "We want to reach out to the entire world with our services. Our dream is to make the WeChat application a global brand that benefits all," said the PR manager.

Li Wan, Tencent’s Public Relations Manager making his presentation

Wechat has started a platform for its ever-expanding services and is also working on its own 3D rendering engine to create realistic appearance on detailed objects, in smartphone-based AR apps. They’re also developing a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology, which helps calculate the position of virtual objects relative to their environment, enabling AR interactions without the need for markers, such as QR code or a special image.

Majority of the new users are the aged people, most of whom are now benefiting from the quality services like WeChat Pay on financial transactions and also information sharing.

This year, Tencent announced that WeChat has overtaken Alibaba with 600 million active WeChat mobile payment users versus 450 million for Alibaba's Alipay.

The Chinese old system of financial gift and reward through red envelops by mainly old people to their younger friends and relatives have been modernized with the WeChat Red Envelop Service. Through this service, users can electronically transfer financial gift to their friends and families mostly during festive occasions in China. The red envelope feature significantly increased the adoption of WeChat Pay. A month after its launch, WeChat Pay's user base expanded from 30 million to 100 million users, and 20 million red envelopes were distributed during the New Year holiday. In 2016, 3.2 billion red envelopes were sent over the holiday period, and 409,000 were sent at midnight on Chinese New Year.

Li told Journalists that more than half of WeChat's users spend over 90 minutes a day on the app.