One of China’s biggest real estate startups is set for its integration in WeChat.
Housing platform Beike will soon be accessible in WeChat Wallet—a highly-coveted section in China’s ubiquitous app— and WeChat users will also have direct access to Beike via the WeChat search function, Tech QQ reports.
This will give Beike visibility among the nearly 1.1 billion monthly WeChat users, including the 900 million WeChat Pay users with access to the Wallet portal.
Beike lets users explore rental and sales properties in China and abroad, peruse housing market information, and browse related services like home decoration.
Last October, Beike revealed that traffic to its platform was up 500% since April, while the number of real estate agents registered on the platform had risen by 800%.
As of December 2018, Beike had launched in nearly 100 Chinese cities, counting more than 120 real estate brands, 18,000 brick-and-mortar brokerages, and 170,000 brokers on its platform.
The company was created last year after China’s largest real estate brokerage, Lianjia, refocused and rebranded its online business from a vertically integrated website into an open platform for property agents and consumers to come together.
Alongside parent company Lianjia, Beike’s backers include Tencent, Baidu, and a host of heavy-hitting venture capital and property development firms.
Last September, Lianjia was said to be raising US$2 billion at a US$13 billion valuation, with Tencent reportedly set to pour US$1 billion into the company.
This integration sees Beike join a select group of third-party partners shown in WeChat Wallet. Fewer than a dozen apps have made it there so far, including Didi Chuxing, Meituan-Dianping, Pinduoduo, and JD.
All of the companies featured in WeChat Wallet have received investments from Tencent.
