China may be a bit hostile to cryptocurrencies but cashless mobile transactions (fiat based) are really beginning to hot up in the country according to the People’s Bank of China (PBoC). The growth is being helped along due to platforms such as WeChat Pay which make it easier to make cashless transactions.
The PBoC, in a report, said that Chinese banks dealt with 8.6 billion payments from mobile services, in the second quarter; that’s a jump of 40.5% on the same period in the previous year. The combined value of mobile payments increased by 33.8% to 39.24 trillion yuan ($6 trillion) while transactions through non-bank payment platforms rose 34.9% to 31.49 trillion yuan ($5 trillion) in Q2.
Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba, said it plans to spend 6 billion yuan ($915 million) over the course of the next two years in order to push forward cashless mobile payments. People’s Daily reports that a joint study from Ipsos, Tencent, and the Chongyang Institute for Financial studies at Renmin University of China shows that 84% of Chinese people are “comfortable” going out to spend money with their phones.
Source: People’s Daily | Image via CFP Photo
