It’s no secret that China’s e-commerce scene is huge and growing, with players like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. By extension, China’s stellar status in the e-commerce landscape also translates into a strong performance in the mobile payments space.
China’s growth in e-commerce has, indeed, been impressive. A new report by McKinsey & Company, released earlier this week, shows that 10 years ago China made up less than one percent of the global e-commerce market. Today its share is 42%.
A thriving e-commerce industry means growing volumes of digital payments. And unlike, 10 years ago, when digital payments mostly took place on a consumer’s desktop, today that also includes mobile payment.
The report shows that in China, the use of mobile payments grew from 25% of the country’s mobile population in 2013 to 68% in 2016. That number comes out to about 731 million people, while the total mobile payments totaled $790 billion in 2016. And that number is only expected to increase with the likes of payment services like WeChat, Weixin and Alipay.
Just look how China’s total mobile payments in 2016 compares to that of U.S. Hint: China’s total is 11 times that of the U.S.

And yet, while the country’s mobile payments game might be strong on the global stage, China still has a long way to go in digitalization of other industries.
Read full report here.






