Messaging service WeChat announced today that it has passed 100 million registered user accounts outside China, double the figure from just three months ago, as its international presence grows amid aggressive global marketing.

This comes right after we reported yesterday that WeChat and its Weixin counterpart (which only users in China get) have hit a combined new high of 235.8 million monthly active users, up a staggering 176.8 percent year-on-year.

In comparison, its rival WhatsApp recently revealed that it has surpassed 300 million monthly active users.

WeChat’s pace of international growth recently has been astonishing. Its latest milestone comes slightly more than a month after WeChat announced that it chalked up 70 million users overseas users.

WeChat has already been well-received in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Malaysia across multiple smartphone OS platforms. In July 2013 it became the most downloaded mobile social app on App Stores in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey.

Chinese Internet giant Tencent, which owns WeChat, has been stepping up its marketing activities to push the messaging service worldwide — even launching a TV commercial starring football star Lionel Messi, which was planned to be aired in 15 countries – and it acknowledged in its Q2 2013 earnings that its net profit for the second quarter was down sequentially due to a “significant” increase in promotional activities for the chat app in international markets.

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