I did a quick Google search and see that Whatsapp was founded in 2009, one year before wechat, which has similar features (but please correct me if I'm wrong).

WeChat is crazy big in China, to the point where you use it to pay for almost anything. It has allowed even the extremely rural to digitise their payments - every stall has a QR code that you can scan and transfer money to. The payment feature scales up very quickly, allowing you to do everything from book cabs through the app through to splitting restaurant bills with other people.

It's more than just a messaging app - it's more like a mash-up of WhatsApp, PayPal, Twitter and Facebook.

Things that WeChat had before WhatsApp were things like "Moments" which WhatsApp adopted quite recently (and in a more simpler way) as "Status"[0] and they also had very strong business integration which WhatsApp only recently began to flirt with through WhatsApp for Business[1].

[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000031/

[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000637/Introducing-the-WhatsApp-...

> The payment feature scales up very quickly, allowing you to do everything from book cabs through the app through to splitting restaurant bills with other people.

Weixin Pay's pricing for money handling seems pretty competitive compared to Western systems. 0.1% to transfer out of their system to your bank if you are transferring >$3200 USD, and 0.6% to process a payment [1]. I wonder when Weixin Pay and startups like Payoneer [2] will get tired of the friction imposed by the current banking interchange systems, and set up their own identity and interchange solution to start breaking 1% on all of a transaction life cycle's service fees (from payer removing from their account and paying, to payee accepting and debiting to their account, perhaps including forex conversion, to final settlement).

[1] https://chinachannel.co/take-wechat-payments-small-business/

[2] https://www.payoneer.com/fees/

No, they don't have the same features. That's why he described WeChat as a platform rather than a messaging client- the extent to which it dominates online life in China has no analogue in the US.

wechat is a bit different, not a good one to talk about, it was started by Tencent QQ Messenger (From back in the period when everyone had a messenger client like MSN, Yahoo, etc.) and was based on similar communication principles with a mobile twist.

WhatsApp didnt have the features WeChat did.

For example, Apple's iMessage and Facebook's Messenger development over the past few years has basically been to become increasingly like WeChat. Whether it's stickers or payments or animations, etc.

Facebook is ripping off a larger variety of apps than WeChat, it seems more like they're trying to push into Snapchat's market share.

I'm not familiar with payments being a feature on iMessage or Messenger, though. Unless you mean just the money transfers to friends, which existed on Facebook's desktop Messenger first IIRC, so it doesn't appear to be ripping off WeChat (which in my experience doesn't really support money transfers in quite the same way, unless we're talking about hongbao).

Also, weren't stickers a thing on Kakao Talk and LINE before WeChat?

Wechat supposedly ripped off a lot of features from LINE, but since LINE is a Japanese/Asian thing, most Americans know even less about that than WeChat.

line is from naver (korean company), but apparently no one in korea uses line... (100% kakao)

surprised to see Line everywhere else in asia though (seems initial popularity decides a lot for these messenger apps - or some extremely unique features that can't be copied)

Line was originally Japanese, it was just acquired by a Korean company, explaining the lack of market share in that country. I think Kakao predates pretty much all modern messengers, including Kik, so it's kind of surprising they never reached out of Korea very much.

Isn't WeChat a LINE clone, which wasn't exactly innovating but simply taking advantage of a cultural niche.