Tencent Holdings Ltd has invested in Chinese taxi booking app Didi Taxi in a bid to promote its payment service to mobile web users. Tencent is the largest Internet firm in Asia, according to Bloomberg.
Tencent participated in a $100-million funding round, according to an email sent yesterday. The said mail was from Jerry Huang, investor relations director at Tencent in Shenzhen, the report said.
Didi Taxi was created by Beijing Xiaoju Kedi Didi Dache Co. Based on an email yesterday, Didi worked with 350,000 cab drivers in 32 cities. The email also said the app had 22 million users that produced 350,000 bookings everyday by December, the report detailed.
Huang said users of Tencent's Wechat, an instant messaging app, can pay for Didi Taxi reservations using the Weixin Payment service, Bloomberg reported.
Yang Yang, an analyst at Internet consulting firm IResearch, said: "Tencent might see a lot of potential in the taxi booking market. Tencent's payment service could become the main tool for taxi payments in the future and this effectively promotes it."
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