Chinese Internet company Tencent Holdings Limited is planning to expand its mobile payment service - WeChat Pay - in Japan to enable Chinese visitors and smartphone users to easily make payments within the country.

According to a report by Nikkei Asian Review, Tencent will make WeChat Pay available at around 10,000 to 20,000 stores in Japan sometime before the end of this year.

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The Chinese company intends to attract Japanese retailers with the help of local firm Hotto Link which is the largest social data provider in Japan and the country's leader in social media analytics.

Together with Hotto Link, Tencent also plans to provide local companies and businesses in Japan the opportunity to advertise their products via WeChat. In addition to that, the company will help them to promote and sell their products to Chinese visitors through e-commerce sites such as JD.com.

The Chinese company already has over 300 million users in China and several countries around the world including Southeast Asia, Oceania, North America and Europe. In Southeast Asia, Tencent's e-wallet service recently made its way into Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

In the Chinese market, Tencent's mobile payment service is going head to head against Alibaba's Alipay online payment platform, while foreign competitors - such as Samsung and Apple - have also jumped into the bandwagon just recently with their own services. To know more about China's mobile payment market, the 5th Mobile Payment China 2016 will hold an event in Shanghai from June 15 to June 16 covering numerous topics such as emerging changes and trends in the mobile payment industry. 

WeChat, also known as Weixin in China, is currently one of the biggest standalone messaging apps with over a billion created accounts as of 2016 and over 700 million active users.

TagsTencent Holdings Limited, Japan, WeChat Pay, mobile payment service, china