Following Line’s move back in August to redesign its mobile chat app with a focus on low-cost calling, Tencent has now added the ability to call mobile phones and landlines from within the WeChat app. Its new calling service is being branded WeChat Out — Line calls its service Line Out. Hmmm.
The feature is currently only available in the U.S., Hong Kong, and India, but Tencent says more countries and regions are coming soon. WeChat Out claims to offer “super-low calling rates” and “excellent call quality,” and is just one more way the Chinese Internet giant is luring users to add a credit card to their WeChat account.
WeChat Out now appears as a new option in the expandable menu when users click the ‘+’ symbol at the top right of the home screen. Every user can redeem $1 in credit when they start with the service, and Tencent says it’s also giving away 100 minutes of free calls to “most numbers around the globe.”
Tencent rolled out an update to WeChat back in October that enabled nine-person video calling, but this time it looks to be challenging services like Skype in a much bigger way as it pushes out of China in earnest.
As I noted in November, Tencent is opening up its mobile payments service to overseas transactions for the first time, meaning that paid services — including this new ability to call mobiles and landlines that would have been previously bound to China users because of the need to attach credit cards to an account — are now being offered up to users in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Clearly, WeChat remains a force to be reckoned with as we move into 2016.
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