The speakeasy economy of WeChat - The Verge

Best known as China’s most popular chat app, WeChat gives users access to a range of informal services, even well outside of Chinese borders.

For an app with over a billion users, WeChat doesn’t make a very strong first impression.

When I opened up WeChat for the first time during freshman orientation at Indiana University (IU), I was amazed at how haphazard it was. The design looked outdated, drenched in a hideous shade of green. The media feed was limited to low-quality photos for reasons I didn’t understand. Even basic navigation was illogical and confusing. I already knew WeChat was a cornerstone of Chinese online life — arguably the most powerful app in the world. Was this it?

For most non-Chinese college students, WeChat is relatively unknown. The only non-Chinese people who use it are usually those who have a specific connection to China. As I learned more of the language and became more entrenched in local Chinese student life, WeChat became a portal into an alternate Bloomington, where thousands of Chinese in southern Indiana come together to create their own social communities and economies entirely via WeChat channels.

At its core, WeChat is a messaging and social media app that includes features from nearly every app currently on your phone. For users not based in China, WeChat may simply serve as a messaging app for contacting friends currently living in China. The rest of WeChat’s many other features can be found tucked within “Discover” and “Me.” The Discover section includes the social media feed, verified accounts from companies and individuals, and thousands of mini programs that act as apps within WeChat, ranging from bike rentals and online shopping to travel and package delivery. While the majority of businesses and apps represented are domestic Chinese, major brands such as Airbnb, Lego, Yves Saint Laurent, Aldi, Air New Zealand, and thousands of other foreign brands use these mini programs to directly connect with their Chinese customers, allowing one to completely avoid the company’s website for browsing or ordering altogether.

WeChat’s true power lies under its “Me” tab within the wallet, which combines a user’s bank accounts, identification cards, and most recently, health information. With all of this information directly integrated into WeChat’s functions, the app’s capabilities extend to nearly every service imaginable. These include (but are not limited to) food delivery, bike rentals, train tickets, utility bills, health certificates, car buying, investments, charity donations, and thousands of miniature apps that extend WeChat’s capabilities to nearly every service imaginable. Paying in physical stores is as simple as scanning the cashier’s QR code or holding your account’s barcode in WeChat to be scanned by the barcode reader.

https://www.theverge.com/23298078/wechat-china-economy-indiana-messaging-commerce-app

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