Apple and Tencent, the company that owns the popular WeChat messaging app, have reached a deal that will let WeChat users resume sending in-app tips to content creators, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Apple first asked Chinese social networking apps to disable tipping functionality back in May 2017 as it violated App Store rules. Tipping, Apple said, was a form of in-app purchase that should be subjected to the same fees as other in-app purchases.
In June, Apple officially updated its App Store Review Guidelines and began allowing tipping, but as an in-app purchase, ensuring the company received its full 30 percent cut. Another tweak was made in September, however, officially allowing Apple users to send monetary gifts to other users without Apple taking a cut.
Tencent initially refused to reimplement tipping as an in-app purchase because in WeChat, tipping is a free service provided to customers to build engagement, with Tencent receiving no portion of the money.
Tipping will soon resume in WeChat, though, as WeChat creator Allen Zhang said on Monday that the company had reached an accord with Apple. Details are scarce, but Zhang said WeChat will tweak its platform so tips are paid to individual content creators.
"In the past, companies like Apple might have had a difficult time understanding China-specific features," Mr. Zhang said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Tencent. "We now all share a mutual understanding and we'll soon bring back the "tip" function."
With little detail available on the deal established between Tencent and Apple, it's not clear if Apple will be receiving a cut of tips sent between WeChat users, but the tipping feature should soon be returning to the app.
Top Rated Comments
WeChat is like whatsapp/telegram on steroids. It started off as just a messaging app but had grown to include more and more features. WeChat together with AliPay (a competitor of WeChat) had transform the entire payment industry in just a couple of years. Almost every single stall there accept cashless/mobile payment, hence you would see the WeChat logo on almost every single shop. Even the street hawkers accept it. They had gone into the extend where some stalls complete stop accepting cash.
Not to mention, there are also lots of mini games within WeChat. As waterfta mentioned, it reduce the need of downloading another app and it works well on budget phone that comes with low storage space.
Another point would be culture. If you look at website from US and China, there is a single biggest different. For US site, it is usually clean and not clutter with too much information. However for China site, a single page is often full cluttered with lots of different texts, links, contents, etc.
As I aren't from China or living there, I can't further explain on why the culture are as such. Take a short trips there and you will see how WeChat works. Last year, I did that for 2 weeks and upon returning back to my country (Singapore), I do miss using WeChat to do my payment because it is simply fast. No messing with coins and notes. Receipt also goes straight into the app.
Yes, I agreed.
Apple needs to be investigated for monopolistic practices. Such a scumbag company.
- uploading money from bank account/credit card to wechat is free (read: wechat doesn't charge for it)
- even certain banks allow deposits to wechat completely free (limited number of occurences each month)
- wechat & alipay are the de facto payment solutions in china. you buy streetfood, clothes, whatever and you pay using your phone
- payments made with wechat (maybe alipay as well) are without fee for buyer & seller
thus said i guess wechat gets its share by "handling/investing" the money (just like any normal bank would do it with the customer accounts)
I live in China now and having one app that does most everything I need is convenient. It frees up apps on my phone which in turn means less apps to update and allows me to pay for everything with one ecosystem regardless of if I'm using Android or Apple.
For example, when Facebook split their messaging app and main app it was frustrating. I'm sure there are decent reasons for them doing that, but, the idea of reverse-integration never made sense to me the end-user.