Chinese taxi app Didi expected to close $100M in funding from Tencent

Didi Dache (or Didi for short) reportedly is raising a Series C round of funding that will be up to $100 million.

Investors include Citic and Tencent.

Tencent has already contributed $15 million to the company in its last round of funding. The app is expected be integrated into Tencent’s mobile VoIP and text application, WeChat. WeChat users, as reported, won’t need to download the Didi app for booking taxis and will be able to make payments with WeChat Payment. Didi has been integrated into the latest version of Tencent Maps.

Didi has stood out from a crowd of taxi apps in China thanks to the backing from investors — especially Tencent. Didi’s major competitor now is Kuaidi, which is venture backed by Alibaba. Likewise, Kuaidi users can make payments with Alipay, the digital payment service of Alibaba Group. Kuaidi announced to acquire the fourth largest taxi app Dahuangfeng in China last month, saying Alibaba would inject more funding for that purpose.

Although Chinese local governments like Beijing stepped in to ban taxi apps or some features, taxi apps have been widely adopted by drivers and users in bigger cities. It is expected that the funding those apps receive will be used for expanding to smaller cities in or even outside of mainland China. Dahuangfeng, now a Kuaidi company, disclosed last week that they had had between 200 and 300 taxis on board in Hong Kong and their next target markets are Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2013