Chinese banks handled a jump in non-cash payments in the first quarter of 2020 with a surge in mobile payments, the central bank said on Wednesday.

Non-cash payments, involving bank cards, online payment vehicles, commercial papers, credit transfer, and other settlements, totaled 1,065.59 trillion yuan ($167 trillion) in the first three months, up by 20.65 percent year on year, according to the People's Bank of China.

For years, China has been a relatively cashless society, with millions of mobile payment users paying with either Tencent's WeChat Pay or Alibaba's Alipay every day. Mobile payment transactions logged a 43.3-percent yearly jump to 130.14 trillion yuan in the first quarter.

The bank card transactions hit 254.94 trillion yuan in the first quarter, up by 28.46 percent year on year. On average, each person holds 6.4 bank cards in China.

China had 12.86 billion bank accounts at the end of March, up by 2.55 percent from the previous quarter, but the growth rate was 0.5 percentage points lower than at the end of the previous quarter. 

Banks in China handled non-cash payments of 4,013.01 trillion yuan in 2020, up by 6.18 percent year on year, the central bank data showed.

(With input from Xinhua)