Ubiquitous social multimedia messaging app WeChat, developed by Chinese technology giant Tencent, has crossed the one billion accounts mark  as its messaging, game and shopping services attract more and more users worldwide.

The symbolic threshold was announced by Pony Ma, the founder and CEO of its parent company Tencent.

“WeChat’s worldwide monthly active users have surpassed the critical one billion mark,” said Ma, who is a delegate at the two-week session of the Communist Party-controlled National People’s Congress. “In the future we hope to use technological innovation to push forward the next developmental step of reform and opening,” Ma said.

WeChat falls behind Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, whose active users reportedly stood at 2.1 billion and 1.5 billion respectively as of last year.

The popularity of WeChat—and profits from its addictive mobile games—have pushed Tencent’s earnings and share price sharply upwards.

Another popular feature of WeChat is its payment service, which allows people to pay at restaurants, buy goods from shops or even send money to friends.

Features of WeChat which made it popular

• Multimedia Messaging: Send Video, Photo, Text, And Voice Messages.
• Group Chat & Calls: Create Group Chats With Up To 500 People And Group Video Calls Up To 9 People which is just double offered by its rival WhatsApp.
• Free Voice & Video Calls: High-Quality Free Calls To Anywhere In The World.
• WeChat Out Calls: Make Calls To Landlines And Mobile Around The Globe At Low Rates (In Certain Regions Only).
• Sticker Gallery: Hundreds Of Free, Fun, Animated Stickers To Express Your Feelings From Some Of Your Favorite Cartoons And Movies.
• Moments: Share Your Best Moments On Your Personal Photo Stream.
• Better Privacy: WeChat Gives You The Highest Level Of Control Over Your Privacy. It’S The Only Messaging App To Be Certified By Truste.
• Meet New Friends: Use “Friend Radar”, “People Nearby” And “Shake” To Meet Others.
• Realtime Location: Instead Of Having To Tell Others Where You Are, Just Use Real-Time Location Sharing.
• Language Support: Localized In 20 Different Languages And Can Translate Messages To Any Language.
• More other features like Desktop App, Custom Wallpapers, Custom Notifications, And Official Accounts make it more interesting among other chatting and multimedia apps.

Recently its rival WhatsApp added new feature to delete the sent message to everyone and extended its time limit.

Image credit- Canva