China’s e-payment business recorded 7.08 billion orders and a turnover of 292.89 trillion yuan (around $47 trillion) in the first quarter of this year, up 25.92% and 34.60% respectively from a year earlier, according to a report released by Chinese central bank-People’s Bank of China.
E-payment includes three categories of payment services of online payment, phone payment and mobile payment, the report noted.
The turnover of online payment business climbed 33.81% YOY to 287.75 trillion yuan and that for phone payment declined 14.61% YOY to 1.24 trillion yuan in the reporting period. The turnover of mobile payment sector soared 255.37% YOY to 3.89 trillion yuan in the first quarter this year, while the number of orders hiked 232.20% YOY to 659 million.
China’s mobile payment turnover surged at an YOY growth rate of more than 200% for five straight quarters since Q1 2013. The annual transaction volume of mobile payment business reached 9.64 trillion yuan in 2013, according to a previous report by PBOC.
It is worth nothing that the researches released by the central bank only include bank-level data. The total transaction volume by Chinese independent mobile payments services stood at 1.21 trillion yuan in 2013, according to a report by online tracking and data analysis service iResearch. iResearch’s data excludes services by conventional banks and China UnionPay, the bankcard association, and includes peer-to-peer money transfers.
PBOC’s report added that the online payment turnover by institutions climbed 161.85% YOY to 4.93 trillion yuan in Q1 this year.
image credit: Shutterstock