Here is a sentence I did not expect to read this year: QQ is giving up on its own mini program platform and telling developers to just use WeChat’s instead.
Tencent announced on July 1 that QQ will fully integrate WeChat mini programs. Users will be able to search for and open WeChat mini programs directly inside QQ. Existing QQ mini programs still work for now, but Tencent is nudging developers hard to migrate. They are even offering tools to help transfer user data and send push notifications to QQ users so they do not get lost in the move.
This is a big deal. QQ has 534 million monthly active users on mobile. That is a lot of people. But WeChat has 1.402 billion. When your older brother is that much bigger, eventually you stop pretending you are going to win.
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it is a pain for developers who already built for two platforms. On the other hand, maintaining two separate mini program ecosystems was always kind of silly. QQ’s mini program engine was already compatible with most WeChat APIs. Developers just had to handle login logic differently. Now even that goes away. QQ will literally run the WeChat mini program code through a plugin called qq-wxmini-plugin. Same code, same experience, one less headache.
IT之家 says their own QQ mini program is already adapted for this. I checked and yeah, it works. The experience is actually slightly better because you are running the real WeChat mini program engine, not QQ’s compatibility layer.
Meanwhile, WeChat itself keeps growing. MAU hit 1.402 billion in Q1 2025, up 3% year over year. And mini programs specifically crossed 1 billion monthly active users earlier this year, covering 108 industries. WeChat公开课 PRO in January 2026 said cross-border users opened mini programs over 5 billion times last year. The platform is not just big, it is everywhere.
Over on the Alipay side, they are fighting a different battle. “碰一下” (Tap-to-Pay) has become Alipay’s big bet against WeChat Pay’s dominance in offline scenes. The numbers are real: Alipay says Tap-to-Pay now processes over 100 million transactions per day. That is a lot of taps. They have covered 400+ cities, 5,000+ brands, and expanded into 2,260细分场景 (细分场景 means细分场景, like subway gates, vending machines, hotel check-ins).
But here is the thing. Offline payment volume between WeChat Pay and Alipay is reportedly around 8:2 in WeChat’s favor. Alipay knows this. Their own app事业群总经理李俊 admitted users open Alipay less than 10% of the time for daily payments. The other 90%? They have to search Xiaohongshu for a tutorial on how to use some Alipay feature. That is embarrassing.
So Alipay is throwing money at the problem. Heavily. They are subsidizing merchants, users, and ground sales staff. A single device installation can earn a promoter up to 260 yuan in rewards. Users get random discounts of 0.1 to 20 yuan per tap, with weekend bonuses up to 88 yuan. It is expensive. The question is whether habits stick when the subsidies end.
Other apps are copying the tap mechanic too. Xiaohongshu added NFC tags in cafes and boutiques. Users tap to jump straight to notes or product pages. Meituan put it on power bank stations. Douyin Pay is testing it in select stores. Even UnionPay launched “碰一碰卡片” with Huawei. But Alipay has a head start and the ground troops to keep expanding.
Speaking of Xiaohongshu, they quietly bought a payment license for about 148 million yuan. Their 2024 GMV hit 400 billion yuan. At roughly 0.7% third-party fees, that was costing them around 2.8 billion yuan a year in payment processing. Now they want to keep that money in-house. Smart. But Xiaohongshu’s real problem is that merchants still treat it as a traffic pool rather than a place to actually sell. Commission rates around 5% vs Pinduoduo’s 0.6-1% mean sellers often just drop links to cheaper platforms.
Back to QQ and WeChat. This merger signals something larger: Tencent is done pretending QQ is a parallel ecosystem. It is a messaging app for younger users and specific communities now. The mini program platform war inside Tencent is over. WeChat won.
What I want to know: will QQ eventually lose its own payment system too? If mini programs are now WeChat’s, why keep QQ Wallet around?