In 2023, over 2 trillion dollars in payments were made online in qatar whatsapp number China, and the chart below shows the growth of online payments in Chinese Yuan over the past decade.
Growth can also be seen in the percentage of payments processed online.
China’s online payments market can be broken down by economic region.
Notice how there is no “south.”
Guandong’s (the province with Shenzhen in blue) development has been much more similar to the other coastal regions in China compared to the other southern provinces of Yunnan (the green province with Kunming in green) and Guangxi (the green province with Nanning).
Northeast China (orange) is a separate section due to its history as an industrial region during Japanese rule. Today, it is economically behind the other coastal regions and is considered a rust belt.
As you can tell from the above chart, the coasts dominate e-commerce, which can be attributed to their role in the Chinese economy since the country opened up in the 1980s.
The richest cities and the best universities are also here.
These areas are also more international, and many young people have migrated to these regions; since the 1990s, Guangdong has replaced Henan as China’s most populous province.
If we break down this chart, east China controls 83.92% of the market while Middle China and West China control 8.87% and 5.73%, respectively. Northeast China has only 1.48%.
Given this data, online payments have taken China by storm over the past decade!
China’s Online Payment Companies: Two Tiers
Being a big country with some provinces more developed than others, the landscape for online payment companies is quite diverse too, and these companies can be divided into two tiers.
The higher tier of online payment companies is Alibaba’s Alipay (支付宝), Tencent’s WeChat Pay (财付通) and UnionPay.
The second tier is made up of a bunch of other competitors.
This chart shows the results of a survey showing how many people used these online payment methods in the past year.
Keep in mind, however, that not every review of China’s online payment market is the same.
For example, another source shows UnionPay has the highest share of transactions (26%), with Alipay (21%) and Tencent Pay (18%) rounding out the top three.