The Chinese tech giant Tencent has announced that it is going to launch its mobile payments service WeChat Pay in Malaysia. The news comes after the Malaysian authorities finally granted the company an e-payments licence, allowing them to handle local transactions in the country. WeChat Pay is set to launch in Malaysia in early 2018, an event that will mark the first time that WeChat Pay will launch outside of its home country of China. Tencent chose Malaysia as a target market because it already has a strong foothold in the country. 20 million people in Malaysia already use the WeChat app, and the country is generally welcoming of Chinese technology. WeChat Pay is not the only Chinese mobile payments service to turn its attention to Malaysia. Its biggest rival Alipay launched in the country in June this year.
