The emergence of social payment and usage of social apps for buying and selling services and products was considered as threats to the banking industry. The usage of WeChat in China has fundamentally altered the whole digital communication landscape. WeChat has over 1.17 billion users. During the COVID-19 pandemic, WeChat implemented various plans to help recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, including consumer awareness, WeChat live stream communication platform, and one-to-one consultation through social media services to assist retailers and increase sales. In addition, they implemented WeChat Work 3.0 for remote working during the pandemic, cross-border e-commerce, and Mini Club Program to converts overseas brick-and-mortar shoppers to online members. WeChat and Facebook facilitated WeChat pay and Facebook pay through their social commerce platform because of market power. This chapter discusses the emergence of WeChat and how it impacts the payment systems.Digital wallets and digital payments are gaining significant traction among consumers as they can move away from cash dependents payments due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing. Contactless payments upsurge even within cash-based economies such as Germany UK, and Japan (Maynard, 2021). According to the Mastercard survey, 82% of respondents worldwide view contactless payment as the cleaner way to pay, and 72% indicated that they would continue using contactless payment post-pandemic (Financier, 2020). On the other end of the spectrum, digital payments were one of the government's tools and facilitated government efforts to disburse funds to those in need and allow households and firms to access online payment and financing. Digital payments allow financial support to reach those in need, particularly to the unbanked, to women, informal sector faster, and paying public wages and salaries digitally.Many governments utilized digital payment technologies to manage the financial aids during COVID-19. The government in some countries used digital G2B payment systems to transfer wages for staff, employee retention funds for SMEs, and lending programs for businesses. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, some governments provided incentives to pay for goods and services digitally via e-wallets. China used consumption coupons disbursed via Alipay and WeChat pay; India facilitates transfers via Aadhaar-linked accounts; Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda leveraging the system for transfer (M-Pesa), and other countries such as Iran, Colombia, Morocco, Peru have been expanding or leveraging existing digital payment systems (Agur et al., 2020).Some other countries facilitate rules and regulations to facilitate digital payments among individuals and merchants. They have cut mobile money transfer fees, increased transaction size limits, and creates contactless credit provisions for businesses to eliminate personal contact (Agur et al., 2020). Jordan is among the countries that are projected to contract around 4% because of this crisis, and most households had difficulties accessing food and livelihood loss resulting in difficulties to access financial services. The government in Jordan supported citizens in using FinTech applications during the lockdown and announced that digital wallets should be used as the main methods to transfer salaries for the private sector and the unbanked population (Al Nawayseh, 2020).During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mobile payment (paying goods, services, and bills by mobile devices) was significantly adopted in many countries, including China. According to a report from China banking and insurance news (2020), the number of mobile transactions during the COVID-19 pandemic was 22.4 million in the first quarter of 2020. Based on CNNIC (2020), the percentage of mobile transactions increase from 73.5% in 2019 to 86% in 2020 (Zhao & Bacao, 2021). China handled 532.814 billion mobile payment transactions worth RMB445.22 trillion in 2018. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 mobile payment transactions in China will reach RMB777.5 trillion in 2020, surging by 31.8% on an annualized basis. WeChat Pay allows a customer to pay via in-app service and connected banks and book hotels, trains, flights, and buy movie tickets (Intrado, 2020). A high growth rate of M-payments is predicted in the next few years, with the expectation of $26.341 trillion by 2026.WeChat and Facebook developed social commerce platforms accepting Facebook Pay or WeChat Pay because they can exercise market power (Phua, 2021). Facebook and PayPal joined Google and Tencent. Grab, a popular Asian app has been keeping busy by purchasing stakes in popular e-wallets such as Indonesia’s LinkAja (Phua, 2021). More than 40 e-payment licenses are issued in the Philippines, Malaysia, and 41 licensed e-wallet operators in Indonesia. GoPay, Dana, Grab, GCash, and MoMo are among the popular ones (Phua, 2021)
