Because the Chinese market is too important. For wechat you can maybe argue that it's a "super app" and probably also can be used to connect to wifi hotspots, but for alipay I fail to come up with an explanation..
Alipay is also pretty much an everything app (it also has its own ecosystem of mini-apps built on Alipay's platform). Except for the social aspect, it's nearly interchangeable with WeChat.
Ah I see. It's been a while thanks to the pandemic that I've been there, and even then preferred just doing wechat so I dont have to deal with even more stuff. At least for regular payment almost all places accepted both options.
The sensible move would really be to break up these "everything" apps. Sure WeChat may have a wifi service, but if it is being used by 0.01% of the user base then why is everyone else forced to approve the permissions? Creating a separate "WeChat Wifi Connector" takes zero extra effort on their part.
