Xinhua News reports that consumers in China’s third-party mobile payment market spent a total of $3.46 trillion (23 trillion yuan) in mobile transactions during the second quarter of 2017 alone. This represents a 22.5% increase from the first quarter of this year.
There are currently 724 million mobile users who call China home, and about 35% of them use mobile payment services, the news outlet details. Only 31.8% prefer using more traditional payment methods, like credit cards or cash.
Observers and Sinophiles will not be surprised to learn that Alibaba and Tencent dominate the Chinese mobile payments market, with the duo jointly representing 92.8% of said market: 53.7% of China’s mobile payment service customers use Alibaba’s Alipay, and 39.1% use Tencent Finance.
As Payment Week points out, this news largely serves to reinforce what those familiar with modern Chinese culture already know: namely, that the country’s mobile market is rapidly expanding, that it has already reached a gargantuan size, and that Tencent and Alipay hold an effective oligopoly over the market.
Payment Week is also keen on mentioning that, with two companies dominating such a high percentage of the multi-trillion-dollar market and handling such sensitive information as is required for performing mobile payments, they make prime targets for hackers, meaning that mobile security will likely become an increasingly prominent discussion topic in Asian fintech circles during the coming months.
Read more at: Payment Week and Xinhua.