Chinese mobile payment market, already the largest around the world, keeps growing at a decent pace, according to a recent report by Chinese internet market researcher Analasys International.
The total transaction volume of the sector in China, as per the report, amounted to over RMB 37.7 trillion (US$ 6 trillion) in the fourth quarter of last year, up 27.91% quarter-over-quarter.
Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s Tenpay, remain the top two players with a market share of 54.26% and 38.15% respectively. The duopoly’s market position hasn’t changed much since last year-end when a then report from Analysys International pegged the two players’ market share at 54.1% and 37.02% respectively.
The fourth quarter, thanks to Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sale, is usually a strong quarter for Alibaba and its financial affiliate Ant Financial. Additionally, some of the new functions with social elements Alipay added – such as Red Envelop – also contributed to the mobile wallet’s growth.
Tencent also kept its momentum, due in part to WeChat Pay’s growing popularity among small- and mid-sized offline vendors.
Alipay and WeChat Pay dominated the mobile payment sector with a combined 92.41% market share, leaving a very narrowed space for the much smaller players to maneuver.
The being said, the smaller players still managed to carve out a slight piece of the cake for themselves, including Lianlian Pay, UMF, and Yeepay, as they changed courses to dip their toes into vertical transaction scenes, avoiding competing with Alipay and WeChat Pay directly. The verticals include logistics, real estate, automobile sales, travel booking, etc.
China is the world’s largest market for third-party mobile payment by transaction volume. Its $6 trillion total transaction volume is almost 59 times more than that in the US, which is $100 billion in 2017, according to business intelligence portal Statista.