Tencent Will Increase Investment in Payments, AI
Tencent Holdings will be increasing its investments in financial technologies like artificial technologies and in payments, the company stated during its earnings call yesterday.
The decision to enhance these types of investments comes after the company reported a record net income of about $2.7 billion. This surge was primarily driven by increased adoption for its mobile games as well as for its social messaging service WeChat, which competes with the Ant Financial operated AliPay.
Pony Ma, CEO of Tencent Holdings said on the company’s earnings call:
Moving on to online platforms. Combined MAU of Weixin and WeChat increased 19% year-on-year to 963 million.
The company will look to make further investments in payments, the cloud, and artificial intelligence, an area where it will be “persistent but patient” given AI is a longer-term initiative, said Tencent President Martin Lau.
