China had a total of 527 million mobile payment users at the end of last year, up by 57.8 million from a year before, said a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center on Jan. 31.
According to a news conference held by China's State Council Information Office at the end of last month, the country's online payment transactions totaled 150 trillion yuan ($23.8 trillion) by October 2017, ranking first in the world.
WeChat Pay, one of China's major mobile payment service providers, attracted over 800 million validated users by September 2017. The number of monthly offline payments was 280% higher than that from a year ago. In addition, WeChat Pay has seen more and more frequent users.
Insiders attribute the success of the innovative service to its unprecedented conveniences as well as promotions and expanding application scenarios that have helped it enlarge its user base.
Apart from the domestic market, the industry has also been more engaged in overseas expansion.
In 2017, Alipay, the online payment platform under e-commerce giant Alibaba, launched in 36 overseas destinations, benefiting hundreds of thousands of merchants. Overseas transactions surged by 306% in the last year when compared with 2016.
A report by accounting organization Deloitte said that China's mobile payment industry is leading the world and the country is exporting its technologies to the developed world.
