New Stats Show Alipay Mostly Mobile

Alibaba issued new usage stats on Monday (Dec. 8) and it appears that most of Alipay’s transactions are now mobile, albeit just barely at 54 percent.

The new figures, which examined 2014 purchases through October, reflect a sharp increase for China’s mobile purchase acceptance. Last year mobile purchases accounted for only 22 percent of transactions, the Wall Street Journal reported. That’s more than doubling in one year.

The new release also noted that Alipay has more than 300 million registered users and processes more than 80 million transactions a day.

“In payments, Alibaba has an advantage over competitors thanks to Alipay. Alipay not only processes payments on Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall online marketplaces, but also handles many other types of online and offline payments, including utility bills, ticket booking, restaurant meals and taxi rides. Ant Financial, Alipay’s parent company, has also expanded into financial services with Yu’e Bao, which allows Alipay users to invest in a money-market fund. Alibaba said Yu’e Bao’s total returns had reached 20 billion yuan ($3.25 billion) as of September,” the Journal story said. “The new data also showed that mobile-payment demand is strong in rural areas where fewer people own desktop computers. Of all the regions, Tibet had the highest proportion of mobile payments, with more than 62 percent of total Alipay payments there coming through mobile devices, it said. While Alipay users in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai were among the biggest spenders, Yiwu, a small city in Zhejiang province—the same province where Hangzhou, Alibaba’s hometown, is located—had the highest average online spending per user of 65,160 yuan ($10,595) this year, the data showed.”

The story also referenced a new report from research firm Analysys International that found that Chinese mobile purchases more than tripled from the prior year, hitting 201.32 billion yuan. “Taobao and Tmall accounted for 84 percent of those transactions, whileJD.com , the e-commerce partner of rival Tencent, accounted for 8 percent,” the story said.