Tencent invests in Easy Transfer

Easy Transfer doesn't handle transactions directly, instead, it works with financial institutions with cross-border payments licenses in China. The startup's value-add is to make remittance hassle-free. Company officials stated that in the old practice, parents and students would need to visit a bank, fill out a stack of forms, double-check if the routing information is correct, and wait for the tuition to deposit in time into the university's account.

With Easy Transfer, users fill out a form online and the startup takes care of the rest for a fee of up to USD 31. Through Tencent's strategic investment, Easy Transfer hopes to further streamline its user experience. The partners have jointly developed a WeChat-based tuition remittance service called WeRemit. Unlike the millions of third-party lite apps inside WeChat's ecosystem, WeRemit is partly operated by WeChat, with deep support from the messaging giant.