It says 67% of users used WeChat to make payments of atleast 100RMB a month. That's a significant number! I guess WeChat makes a commission on that payment. Would that be the largest moneymaking feature of WeChat?
I will never activate my wechat payment. Actually I avoid all Tencent products like plague. Having been seeing Tencent's shameless copy-cating and alluring teenager to spend money on its shitty virtual costumes (In early days, you would have a half naked virtual avatar if you didn't purchase any costumes and costumes have expirations),it is hard for me to regain any trust in this company.
WeChat users can send Red Envelope to friends or relatives. It is often used as a game in a WeChat group. I dont think this can be counted as real payment.
I order lunch on WeChat and send a red envelope inside a group chat as payment after its been delivered. The group has 300+ members. This is the exception, though. There are better ways of making payments through WeChat and I'm guessing that envelopes make up a small fraction of the stated number.
Is it really that weird? My wife uses weixin for normal things like buying lunch, paying for a taxi, buying veggies at the stand downstairs. It would add up to more than 100 rmb/ month, but then so would a UnionPay card, and Tencent is subsidizing the heck out of this right now to get adoption up.
QR is a lot less convenient than RF, ApplePay this is not.