
WeChat supports different instant messaging methods, including text messages, voice messages, walkie talkie, and stickers. Photographs may also be embellished with filters and captions, and automatic translation service is available. It can also integrate with other social networking services such as Facebook and Tencent QQ. WeChat also allows users to exchange contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth, as well as providing various features for contacting people at random if desired (if people are open to it). WeChat provides many features similar to Snapchat such as text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video calls and conferencing, video games, photograph and video sharing, as well as location sharing. "transactions" with WeChat through an executive order but was blocked by a preliminary injunction issued in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in September 2020. President Donald Trump sought to ban U.S. In response to a border dispute between India and China, WeChat was banned in India in June 2020 along with several other Chinese apps. WeChat's revenues from its value-added services were US$5.5 billion. For example, in Q2 2017, WeChat's revenues from social media advertising were about US$0.9 billion (RMB6 billion) compared with Facebook's total revenues of US$9.3 billion, 98% of which were from social media advertising.

By comparison, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp had about one billion monthly active users in 2016 but did not offer most of the other services available on WeChat. After the launch of WeChat payment in 2013, its users reached 400 million the next year, 90 percent of whom were in China. As of January 2022, it was reported that WeChat has more than 1.2 billion users.

WeChat had over 889 million monthly active users by 2016, and as of 2019 WeChat's monthly active users had risen to an estimate of one billion. ĭuring a period of government support of e-commerce development-for example in the 12th five-year plan (2011–2015) -WeChat also saw new features enabling payments and commerce in 2013, which saw massive adoption after their virtual Red envelope promotion for Chinese New Year 2014. By 2012, when the number of users reached 100 million, Weixin was re-branded "WeChat" for the international market. User adoption of WeChat was initially very slow, with users wondering why key features were missing however, after the release of the Walkie-talkie-like voice messaging feature in May of that year, growth surged. The original version of the app was created by Allen Zhang and named "Weixin" ( 微信) by Pony Ma and launched in 2011. WeChat began as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010. Recognizing smart phones were likely to disrupt this status quo, CEO Pony Ma sought to proactively invest in alternatives to their own QQ messenger app.

WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. WeChat ( Chinese: 微信 pinyin: Wēixìn ( listen) lit. Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish
