About 1–2 months ago, WeChat started showing a new wechatpay cat on some transactions. In fact, the author mentioned this cat much earlier in the complete WeChat Pay guide. There are two versions:

  • Wechatpay*Tencent, categorized as Services – Telephone Service
  • wechatpay Shenzhen CHN, categorized as Services – Computer Network/info Srvs
On the author’s Citi Premier card, this purchase earned only 1x, while TG purchases all earned 3x

This Cat first started appearing in February of this year (or even earlier) on QR-code payments for some video services, membership services, or game purchases (see this 101 news flash: WeChat Pay | Using a VISA/Master credit card can trigger a new transaction category: Telephone Service). Now it seems to have expanded to everyday QR-code spending as well. One thing that is clear is that when this cat appears, it is currently mostly on merchant-presented QR payments (the merchant scans you). It can also appear on JD shopping purchases (HT: cpcp).

These two categories are neither travel nor dining. For most credit cards, that means only 1x rewards. The odds of this happening are not high right now, but it does come up from time to time.

The trigger mechanism is unclear, and it does not seem related to the transaction amount. If your code gets scanned by a merchant next time, keep an eye on it. My personal guess is that the probability is around 5%–10%, but getting hit on a large purchase still hurts.

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HT: readers CK and CX Xiao