Doing Business in China Vol. 1: Wechat and Why Mobile is King

Dall-E Prompt: hundreds of people looking at their smartphones, busy city in the background with skyscrapers, octane 3d

“Add me on wechat” is probably the most frequently used phrase when dealing with Chinese suppliers (next to “MOQ is 10000 pieces”) on Sourcing platforms. Wechat is China’s “App for Everything” and the world’s largest standalone mobile app with around 1,2 billion monthly active users. Wechat is everywhere. Buying groceries, booking a flight, paying your utility bills, reading news, checking-in on your friend’s social life, you name it - Wechat does it - and way more. There is no getting around using Wechat when you are in China. But why?

China’s population was introduced to Computers and the Internet quite a few years later than people in Switzerland. In 2000, almost 50% of the people in Switzerland used the Internet in some form, compared to a measly 2% in China. In 2008 Swiss Internet Users grew to more than 80%, while the percentage in China was still a modest 23%. Internet usage really took off in China during the last 7 years, in large part due to the introduction of usable Smartphones with an affordable price tag. Right now, the Internet has a 75% penetration rate in China, compared to more than 95% in Switzerland, which is virtually everybody who can use an electronic device. 

DALL-E Prompt: A hand holding a smartphone using wechat, octane 3d, digital render

While a lot of Swiss companies were rather late to the Mobile trend, and a lot of apps still feel like the slow brother of their respective websites, Chinese developers had a much easier choice to make as everybody was primarily using smartphones anyway. China is definitely a Mobile-First, and oftentimes a mobile-only, country.

If Mobile is King in China, then Wechat is definitely the Crown Prince. Wechat does not have an inspiring, garage startup background story. It was developed by Tencent, which already had the most dominant instant messaging and email platform in QQ, but saw the shift to a mobile dominated market early on. Wechat was first released in 2011 and saw relatively slow growth in the first year of existence. The app usage took off with the introduction of voice messages and even more with the huge Hongbao (Red envelope) promotion, which enabled users to send money over Wechat during the 2014 Chinese New Year.

Dall-E prompt: Thousands of people looking at their smartphones, busy city in the background with skyscrapers, layered paper

While business in Switzerland is still largely focusing on asynchronous communication via E-Mail, the direct-messaging style of Wechat is immensely popular in China both in private and business. Generally, as soon as the introductions are done, the communication on Wechat is less formal than via E-mail. If you communicate with suppliers or distributors in China, it is very common to do it in a Wechat group with a few members from each side, which gets rid of the tiresome CC’ing.

As good and handy as smartphones can be, they are also huge distraction tools. Quickly checking the order progress with your suppliers on Wechat and suddenly you are 10 minutes deep into dancing cats on Tiktok. To avoid this, you can use the Wechat Desktop app. While the Desktop version is definitely not first priority for Tencent, it does offer the basic functions such as messaging, voice and video-calls or file-sharing.

In case you are already doing business in China for a prolonged time and you went through the struggle to open a Chinese Bank account, we highly recommend the usage of the WechatPay Features. International payments from Switzerland to China are notoriously difficult, slow and expensive. If you are working with a less-experienced, smaller supplier, it makes the whole payment process much smoother and less worrisome.

Now, we gave you a small glimpse into the Mobile-First Online Culture in China. We helped Swiss Companies on-board Chinese suppliers, standardize products, negotiate prices, arrange shipments and handle their relationship management - all through Wechat. We would love to help you simplify your ventures in China and are looking forward to hear from you