WeChat Pay, officially referred to as Weixin Pay (Chinese: 微信支付; pinyin: Wēixìn Zhīfù) in China, is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by WeChat based in China that allows users to make mobile payments and online transactions.

[2] WeChat Pay's main competitor in China and the market leader in online payments is Alibaba Group's Alipay.

Alibaba company founder Jack Ma considered the red envelope feature to be a "Pearl Harbor moment", as it began to erode Alipay's historic dominance in the online payments industry in China, especially in peer-to-peer money transfer.

[6] Although users receive immediate notification of the transaction, the WeChat Pay system is not an instant payment instrument, because the funds transfer between counterparts is not immediate.

The feature was launched through a promotion during China Central Television (CCTV)'s heavily watched New Year's Gala, where viewers were instructed to shake their phones during the broadcast for a chance to win sponsored cash prizes from red envelopes.

[13] In 2019 it was reported that Chinese users can use WeChat Pay in 25 countries outside of China, including, Italy, South Africa and the UK.

[11] In the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, Charlie Munger identified WeChat as one of the few potential competitors to Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

[14] In 2021, the mandate by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to open up the "walled garden" ecosystems of the major tech companies has led to the introduction of interoperability of payment QR codes of WeChat Pay and competing Alipay and UnionPay's Cloud QuickPass platforms.