Alipay, the largest and most popular Chinese online payment service, just shared its insights into its users’ online shopping behavior over the past year, given the service’s de facto dominating position in Chinese online payment market – Alipay claimed more than 800 million registered accounts as of last December while according to a fresh new stats released yesterday by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) that China crossed 564 million netizens in 2012- the insights literally reflect Chinese people’s online consuming behaviors in general.
According to Alipay, though economically developed Zhejiang (14.85%), Guangdong (14.06%), Shanghai, Beijing and Jiangsu topped the five spots by average annual spending, underdeveloped regions experienced fastest growth compared to the big guys as tier 4 cities grew 64% yoy in online payment users and 68% yoy in payment amounts.
The plethora of mobile devices also boosted mobile payments in last year, according to Alipay, mobile payments via the service saw a stunning 546% growth from a year earlier. An interesting finding regarding mobile payment is that, people in small cities preferred paying through mobile channel as the fact reflects that mobile devices is more prevalent than PC in underdeveloped areas.
Alipay CFO Jing Dongxian told us that in 2012 the service enjoyed a daily transaction volume of more than RMB 6 billion yuan (US$ 964 million).
Rumor has it that Alipay looks to ramp up its mobile app to ride on the trend of mobile payment, Mr. Jing partly confirmed the rumor, saying that Alipay has been working on some features to turn your mobile phone into a wallet. He believed that with the advancing of mobile internet, the line between online and offline payment would be blurred, mobile Alipay could become what dubbed on-the-field pay or cloud pay in the foreseeable future.