The social media industry in Hong Kong has gone from strength to strength. Facebook and WhatsApp remained the top with a 70.6 percent monthly usage rate as of the third quarter of 2024. Facebook lost its dominance in the market with a 77 percent penetration rate, followed by Instagram. The high internet quality It comes as no surprise that a large percentage of the population in the Asian financial hub are active social media users. Hong Kong citizens are known for being well connected in the social media world. It consistently ranks as having one of the fastest internet connections worldwide - as of April 2023, Hong Kong had an average fixed broadband internet connection speed of 205.19 Mbps. Facebook in Hong Kong Facebook is not just used for staying connected with friends and family; many in the financial hub also use it to keep up with the latest news and to research or find products to purchase. With such a high user penetration rate, Facebook has been particularly focused on brand advertising and user engagement. Mobile advertising accounted for a large chunk of Facebook’s global advertising revenue. In Hong Kong, social media advertising grew by 12 percent, while Facebook's ad revenue increased by four percent in the third quarter of 2022.

The number of Tencent's WeChat active accounts has been increasing steadily. As at the end of March 2025, the Chinese multi-functional social media platform had over *** billion monthly active users. WeChat users First released in 2011, WeChat is a mobile messaging app developed by the Chinese company Tencent. In its home market of China, WeChat was marketed as Weixin and was rebranded as WeChat in 2012 for international audiences. In 2018, WeChat and Weixin surpassed *********** users, which was a significant increase from the previous year. Today, WeChat is one of the leading social networks worldwide, ranking ******in terms of active user numbers. It has users from different age groups. Special features on WeChat WeChat has lots of popular messaging app features, including Moments. Most WeChat users access WeChat Moments every time they open the app. The app also provides a broad range of services, such as financial management and mobile shopping. Short videos, online payment, and gaming were the most popular activities among WeChat users. A survey found that half of users spent *** to ** minutes per visit on the short video function, WeChat Channels.

Hong Kong Payment Market size was valued at USD 130.93 Billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 205.55 Billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecast period 2026-2032.

Hong Kong Payment Market Drivers

1. Adoption of Digital Payments The payment landscape is changing as a result of the emergence of mobile wallets like Octopus App, WeChat Pay HK, and AlipayHK. Convenience in daily transactions is being driven by the growing usage of contactless payments and QR codes.
2. Government Proposals and Laws Through programs like the Faster Payment System (FPS), which facilitates immediate interbank payments, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) encourages digital finance. Market expansion is aided by the drive for cross-border payment interoperability with Mainland China and other areas.

The most used digital wallets in Hong Kong typically originate from within the China or Hong Kong, with five apps reaching a MAU of more than *******. This is according to a ranking of the biggest apps that can function as a digital wallet for payments, based on a minimum of ****** monthly active users (MAU). The most used apps are apps like Alipay or WeChat that come from China. Digital wallets rank as the most used payment method in physical stores in Hong Kong.

The Asia-Pacific Contactless Payment Market was valued at USD 10.73 Billion in 2023 and is expected to reach USD 25.68 Billion 2029, with a CAGR of 15.48% through 2029.

Facebook, the world’s most popular social network, has billions of monthly active users globally of which less than three million are in China. The reason why Facebook reaches only around four percent of the Chinese population is because it is blocked in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) along with many other foreign social media giants like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

Why is Facebook banned in China?  

The Chinese government has been blocking access to Facebook since July 2009, when a series of anti-government riots appeared in the Xinjiang province. The activists reportedly used Facebook as their main communications channel. Chinese authorities have no control over foreign social networks and see them as a threat to social and political stability, hence a long list of foreign internet sites, Facebook among them, are no longer easily accessible in China. Some people, however, access blocked websites by connecting to a virtual private network (VPN).

What is the future of Facebook in China?  

Facebook’s most recent attempt to make a comeback in July 2018 was immediately prevented by the Chinese authorities. It is unlikely that China will allow it for as long as Facebook refuses to store its data servers within the country’s borders. Besides, keeping foreign social media banned is economically beneficial for such Chinese social networks as WeChat, Sina Weibo and Youku Tudou. WeChat, the most popular Chinese social media platform and messaging app, seems to successfully fill the “Facebook void” for at least a billion monthly active users.

In 2024, the value of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's assets amounted to **** trillion U.S. dollars. The bank was not only the largest bank in China but also the largest bank in the world. When the bank went public in Hong Kong, it was the most valuable IPO in history at the time. Banking industry in China As one of the world’s largest players, the Chinese banking industry documented an increase in total assets, reaching around *** trillion yuan in 2023. Although the banking sector in China developed as a state-owned and policy-driven industry in the early opening up and reforming period, today, it has evolved into a more diversified and competitive market. Most of the leading state-owned banks, such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, were restructured into joint-stock companies in the early 2000s, while a growing body of commercial banks started their operations on a regional level. In addition, more and more banks specialize in segmented areas. For instance, Ping An Bank grew the fastest as a private banking service provider, partly due to synergies with its well-established insurance business. Furthermore, the rapid-expanding internet economy allowed for the rise of non-physical banks like WeBank, which is backed by Tencent and China Zheshang Bank. A thriving yet chaotic digital payments market China’s financial industry is an early adopter of new technologies and innovations, and the fintech-empowered digital payments market in China is one of the fiercest battlefields in this sector. Companies with the most impressive performances are the third-party payment service operators backed by internet tycoons such as WeChat Pay and Alipay. Both had a user base of over *********** as of 2025. Confronted with the increasing threat of non-bank channel payments, traditional commercial banks have been pushing forward their digitalization transition. As of November 2024, monthly active app users of the Industrial and Commercial Bank amounted to almost ** million.