Tencent attacks Alibaba with mini shops

WeChat can already do (almost) everything, but it has not had its own shops so far. The Tencent group, which owns the universal communication app, now wants to close this gap – and could thus steal many smaller customers away from the trading platforms of competitor Alibaba. The service WeChat Mini Shop (Xiao Shangdian, 小商店) will move from the start-up phase to the regular operation phase soon. The goal is explicitly to „lower the threshold to enter trading activities on a small scale,“ according to a page for developers.