China’s mobile payment enters overseas markets

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Chinese mobile payment is big, and tech consultancy firm Forrester Research says China's mobile payment market is 90 times the size of that in the US.

Chinese online payment giant, Alipay, launched a new marketing campaign this week to showcase its rich data assets for personal consumption. It allows users to generate their own personal year-end finance report based on actual shopping data.

Alipay’s data also indicated that 80 percent of all of its transactions were via mobile, and, 11 provinces and regions boasted more than 90 percent mobile finance penetration rates last year.

"The midwest of China saw a 23-percent growth in per capita spending, with 90 percent of the transactions done on mobile, above 82 percent on national average," said Bai Xue, senior analyst of Ant Financial.

And since 2017, more than 30 cities in China have made it possible to buy tickets on public transport with Alipay.

Alipay is not the only mobile payment frontier in China. Alibaba's major rival in mobile finance, Tencent is also backing that trend.

"Mobile payment is gradually penetrating lower tier cities and even remote areas. That's thanks to an increase in WeChat users and their decision to bundle their bank accounts with us," said Huang Li from Wechat Pay.

Not only occupying domestic market, China’s online payment players are expanding their businesses abroad as well: Alipay has landed in 36 overseas markets and hundreds of thousands of vendors, and WeChat Pay has also expanded into 25 foreign markets.