Mini programs

Mini programs are sub-applications that run inside a host super app, most importantly WeChatTencent's super app that combines messaging, social feeds, payments, and millions of built-in mini programs, and is effectively the default operating system of daily life in China., which introduced them in 2017. They load in seconds, require no installation, and handle tasks like ordering at restaurants, queueing at hospitals, renting bikes, and checking official records.

The model solved a real problem: Chinese users resisted installing yet another app for occasional needs, and small businesses could not afford app development. Mini programs lowered the cost of going digital so dramatically that millions of them now exist across WeChat, AlipayAnt Group's payment and lifestyle app, originally built as the escrow layer for Taobao, which together with WeChat Pay forms China's mobile payment duopoly., DouyinByteDance's Chinese version of the short-video app known internationally as TikTok, run as a separate product with its own content and e-commerce ecosystem., and other platforms, collectively serving user numbers in the hundreds of millions daily.

For foreigners, the practical note is that many services in China, from museum tickets to shared power banksRentable portable batteries docked in kiosks across Chinese cities, rented by scanning a QR code and returnable at any station of the same network., assume you can scan a QR code and use a mini program, usually inside WeChat with its payment wallet attached.