Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent has said that it is looking to pay more attention to smart retail and payment platforms for investment moving forward.

That's according to Reuters, which reports that the company's president Martin Lau said the firm is looking to put its money into other sectors. That's not to say that Tencent is reducing its investment in the games market - which has traditionally been an area of focus for the Chinese behemoth - but rather that it is looking to splash its cash in a more diverse range of businesses.

This comes in the wake of 2018, when approvals for games in China were frozen for nine months. That hit Tencent's bottom line, like many companies in the region with big exposure to the games market, which is likely another incentive for the firm to have a more diverse portfolio.

“Previously our traditional investment sectors were mostly focused on video games content and frontiers of science and technology,” Lau told a gathering of more than 500 Tencent-backed companies.

“However, with the development of Tencent’s WeChat mini-app ecosystem and payment platform, we will pay more attention to smart retail and payment platforms in future."