WeChat poised to become China’s official electronic ID system

The WeChat ID pilot programme in Guangzhou will be extended to the whole of Guangdong province and further across China from January next year.

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Mobile application WeChat, which had 980 million monthly active users as of September 30 this year, is now being developed into an electronic personal identification system by the government of Guangzhou, capital of the southern coastal province of Guangdong. Photo: Reuters

Li Taoin Shenzhen

Published: 9:45pm, 26 Dec 2017Updated: 12:55am, 27 Dec 2017

WeChat, the popular mobile application from Tencent Holdings, is set to become more indispensable in the daily lives of many Chinese consumers under a project that turns it into an official electronic personal identification system.

The government of Guangzhou, capital of the southern coastal province of Guangdong, started on Monday a pilot programme that creates a virtual ID card, which serves the same purpose as the traditional state-issued ID cards, through the WeChat accounts of registered users in the city’s Nansha district, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua.

It said that trial will soon cover the entire province and further expand across the country from January next year.

The programme’s success would mark one of the most significant milestones for WeChat after it was initially rolled out by Tencent as a mobile messaging service in 2011, and then evolved into the country’s largest social network, as well as a popular online platform for payments and money transfers.

Shenzhen-based Tencent has estimated that WeChat, marketed as Weixin on the mainland, recorded 980 million monthly active users in the quarter ended September 30.

The WeChat ID programme was co-developed by the research institute of the Ministry of Public Security and Tencent’s WeChat team, and supported by various banks and several other government departments.

The project is expected to help deter online identity theft, as facial recognition technology is used to verify applicants before their virtual ID cards get authorised.