(Yicai Global) Nov. 28 -- Tencent Holdings will join hands with Line, which runs Japan's leading messaging app, to allow Chinese tourists to use WeChat Pay on trips to the country. 

The parties have penned an agreement involving Line's payment service, the two firms said in a joint press release yesterday. The collaboration comes on the heels of a tie-up between Shenzhen-based Tencent's domestic rival Ant Financial Services Group's Alipay and Yahoo Japan, which will also offer mobile payments to Chinese visitors. 

WeChat Pay will utilize Line Pay's offline marketing to further immerse itself into local daily life and provide a deeper level of service for Chinese tourists in Japan, China Securities Journal reported yesterday, citing Li Peiku, the vice-president of the Shenzhen-based payment app.

About 7.4 million Chinese people visited Japan last year, which was triple the figure from three years earlier, Japanese official tourism data show. 

WeChat Pay is already available in some Japanese retail locations including New Chitose Airport in Sapporo, Don Quijote discount chain stores, as well as Fuji-Q Highland amusement park. The number and volume of transactions jumped more than sixfold in June because of a surge in the number of participating merchants from the year before. WeChat Pay supports payments in 49 overseas countries and regions, as well as 16 currencies.

Based in Tokyo, Line is a unit of South Korean internet search giant Naver.

Editor: Emmi Laine