WeChat Pay apologises for charging higher fees on higher education payments in China

Tencent's WeChat Pay has apologised for charging higher fees on some Chinese higher education payments, after the company has triggered backlash in the local education industry.

According to a statement released on WeChat Pay's Weibo account released on 29 June, the company apologised for misunderstandings and confusion caused by its poor handling of payment rate issues with local universities. It pledged to take no charges on non-profit payments. “With the continuous growth in cases and merchants among campuses, we found that some profit-based scenarios, such as eCommerce and hotel and tourism transactions, have remained in the zero-rate education subsidy, resulting in increasing costs,” the statement reads.

It added that the purpose of making the adjustments was to rectify some payment areas, where fee rates were below the market average. Meanwhile, it caused confusion among schools, teachers and students.

In another statement, WeChat Pay denied that it planned to charge a 0.6% handling fee and said that it looked to increase the rate targeting profitable transactions to 0.2%. It added that it would take 0.1% and the remaining 0.1% would be given to third-party partners who supply the payment technology.

According to multiple Chinese reports such as Sina, several Chinese universities such as Northwest University (西北大學), Nanjing University of Science and Technology (南京理工大學) and Zhengzhou University of Light Industry (鄭州輕工業大學) said they would suspend WeChat Pay service on campus as WeChat would start charging fees on payments for some items other than school fees. 

A check by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE saw on Northwest University’s website that the university issued a statement, stating that it would suspend WeChat Pay from 30 June to protect teachers and students' interests as Tencent would start charging a 0.6% transaction fee from 1 July.

Sina has issued a vote on Weibo after the Tencent's apology, in which over 330K netizens agreed that the handling fees charged by WeChat Pay are too high. Meanwhile, about 5,000 disagreed and about 7,880 said they didn't use WeChat Pay.

According to SCMP, Tencent's plan of charging higher fees came as big technology companies in China including Tencent are being asked by shareholders to find new revenue streams and adopt cost-reduction measures and conduct layoffs under poor economic situations.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Tencent for a statement.

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