Chinese online gaming and social networking group Tencent has pulled back from a high-stakes battle with ecommerce company Alibaba for control of China’s mobile payments market, after spending billions of renminbi on subsidies to attract users.

Last month the company began charging users for transferring funds between WeChat Pay — the payments service linked to Tencent’s popular instant messaging app — and traditional bank accounts. Previously, Tencent had subsidised the transfers by absorbing the associated bank transaction fees rather than passing them on to users. A WeChat wallet feature also allowed transfers between different commercial banks.

In January alone, Tencent spent Rmb300m ($46m) on bank transaction fees, the company revealed in its annual report. For the fourth quarter, “other” revenue expenses rose 153 per cent to Rmb1.5bn, an increase it said was “mainly driven” by bank transaction fees accrued by WeChat Pay.