Mobile payments in China rise in 2013

Shanghai residents spent an average of 31,018 yuan (US$5,085) last year through Alipay, a third-party payment service, according to data yesterday.

Their expenditure accounted for 9.3 percent of the total spending in the country last year, according to Alipay, which was founded by China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba.

Guangdong Province ranked first in total online spending, with expenditure by residents there contributing 15.99 percent. Next came Zhejiang, Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu, according to Alipay.

Mobile payments also jumped last year as the number of Alipay users increased more than five times from a year ago.

During the one-day online shopping carnival on November 11, the so-called Single's Day, Alipay recorded 188 million transactions and 24 percent of the purchases were paid via mobile devices.

Qinghai Yushu Autonomous Prefecture notched the highest ratio among other counties or cities for purchases via mobile devices, with up to 38.3 percent of Alipay users having done so. Alipay pointed out that lower-tier cities usually have higher adoption of mobile payment service due to lower coverage of broad-band connection.

China's mobile payment size nearly tripled to 334.3 billion yuan in the third quarter from the quarter before, and Alipay's market share was 64.4 percent, research firm Analysys International said in a report.