What the person above means is different. If you open an account, nowadays you have to ask someone that already has a Wechat account to scan a QR code to vouch that you are indeed who you claim to be. It doesn't actually do ID identification though and it doesn't have to be a Chinese mainland user. It can be any other active Wechat account. Full ID Identification only works with a China mainland bank account IIRC.

What the person above implies is that the other two are on the hook when you start spreading any Government information. I'd assume that the government would investigate anyone in your friend list if you do that though regardless of whether they verified you or not, so it's kind of a minor detail in my opinion.

> What the person above means is different

What person? The first paragraph in ev1’s comment (and the ‘liveness’ reference in the reply) are not about ‘vouching’.

Really? I’m outside of China, and signed up for WeChat (for work) but never had to do any of the KYC things. They only took my number to send an OTP.

If they ask for KYC in the mainland I suppose it’s understandable since it serves a lot more than a chat app there (payment, SSO for a lot of other services).

When I tried to install WeChat because I was going to travel to China, it kept making me verify my account repeatedly, I guess it was because my phone was rooted...

Got it, thanks for clarifying.

This is for the equivalent of Facebook Messenger or playing a F2P game, not fintech - bank requires even more, and linking a "real name ID" IRL bank account anyway.

Wechat in the mainland actually does do fintech.