Global mobile payment market springs up as smartphones prevail, “internet plus” spreads and technology advances. Globally in 2017, people in the three countries China, Norway and Britain most favored mobile payment.

In China, nearly 47% people used the way to pay and the shares of Norway and Britain were 42% and 24%, respectively, compared with a mere 17% in the US. By the user numbers of mainstream mobile payment platforms, WeChat Pay came to the top spot with 600 million users; Alipay followed with 400 million; PayPal claimed 210 million users, ranking third; Apple Pay was positioned fourth with 87 million users.

Till December 2018, Chinese mobile netizens numbered 817 million, a staggering 98.6% of whom got connected to the Internet via their mobile phones. 583 million, or 71.4% of the total number of mobile netizens, paid online using smartphones, with an annual growth rate of 10.7%.

The prevalence of mobile internet and the high penetration of online shopping set the stage for expansion of mobile payment in China. In 2018, the country’s mobile payment size soared by 58.62% to RMB467.9 trillion on the previous year, of which banking payment institutions handled 60.531 billion transactions, RMB277.39 trillion in value, surging by 61.19% and 36.69% on an annualized basis, separately. China leads the world in mobile payment business, with electronic payment as a percentage of as high as 71.4% in the country in 2018. It is predicted that the Chinese mobile payment market will be worth as much as RMB1,800 trillion in 2025. 

Global mobile payment industry is still brisk in 2019. Although the tighter oversight by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) poses challenges to mobile payment operations, it brings new vitality. The limit of payment by scanning static barcode, which is specified in Standards for Barcode Payment Business (YF No.296) (hereinafter referred to as No.296 Document), may be a boon for industries such as dynamic barcode display equipment and smart POS device. Opportunities in the mobile payment industry of China from 2019 to 2025 cover the following: 

Near field communication (NFC) payment products: NFC payment is welcome by mobile payments users as the State launches a range of policies to encourage and guide them to use and the 5G technology is beginning to flourish. Beyound that, the No.296 Document defines a cap of RMB500 on daily payment via static barcode, which is unquestionably good news for banks to develop NFC payment products. 

Pay with face: the maturing AI technology enables pay with face to be a new mobile payment option for young people in the first- and second-tier cities that set an example for the third- and fourth-tier cities to popularize this payment method. Despite being left behind a little, cities at lower levels still have immense potential to adopt the way to pay according to the standards formulated by the first-tier cities.

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