Users of Tencent's popular WeChat chatting application may have to pay fees after media reported China's major telecommunications operators are looking to charge users, a senior regulatory official said yesterday.

Miao Wei, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the regulator, told a forum the ministry is "coordinating" between telecom operators and Tencent on charging fees for WeChat users. The ministry is studying whether users need to pay a small fee to the telcos to use the app, he said.

"We will consider reasonable requests of telecom companies," Miao said. "But it is not allowed if they try to monopolize the market and contain value-added services like WeChat."

According to media reports, China Mobile Ltd, China Unicom and China Telecom Corp, are mulling to charge users for the app because of its large data bandwidth use.

Launched in 2011, the app became popular - with over 300 million users - from the second half of last year, posing an increasing challenge to the three telcos.

Using WiFi, users of WeChat can use it for free and be able to send text messages internationally, which has threatened the telcos' traditional text messaging services.

Tencent's income from value-added services grew 13.8 percent to 3.72 billion yuan (US$590 million) last year.