Tencent retail investments not sign of retail launch: Pony Ma

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holding Ltd has invested in several traditional retailers, such as Carrefour SA's China unit and Yonghui Superstores, but its chairman, Pony Ma Huateng, said that the company does not plan to directly take up retail business itself.

He made the comment and explained in detail about the benefits he wants to get from the retail industry investments at the China (Shenzhen) IT Summit in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province on March 25. 

“First, it will facilitate the development of our payment system and the financial service behind that,” he said, noting that scanning a QR code and paying through Tencent’s WeChat Payment has become very convenient for offline customers in China.

Moreover, he believes enhancing the connection with old-school retailers also could provide strong support for their cloud business. “Cloud computing will support the entity industries to use artificial intelligence technology to deal with big data in the cloud in the future,” he said.

Another important aspect is advertising. He believes ads in their social network will achieve better results compared with traditional methods.

It is important because this can decide whether advertising could become the dominant source of revenue of the company's internet platform in future, he added. The monthly active user accounts of WeChat reached 989 million last year.

This year marked the IT Summit's 10th annual forum. Its theme is “New era, digital China and the Future World.”