Web Payments in China Reportedly Doubled in '09

Source: Global Times

By Sun Zhe

China's third-party online payments this year will more than double those in 2008, according to a study released Tuesday.

Third-party online payments this year will total 576.6 billion yuan ($84.43 billion), a 110.2 percent increase from last year's 274.3 billion yuan ($40.2 billion), according to a report by iResearch, a Beijing-based web research organization.

Half of the total sum of the payments was transacted through Alipay, a third-party payment platform under China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, with more than 10 other platforms sharing the other half.

Online third-party payments only accounted for 0.1 percent of the total non-cash payments in the year, which the report said accounted for the increase, as there was still room left to grow. It also cited increasing user-friendliness and security.

The report said the annual growth rate of the industry has been higher than 100 percent for five straight years and the payment amount during that period has grown by a factor of 30. It is estimated 90 million people made payments online this year, up 73.1 percent from 2008, though the figure accounts for only 23.1 percent of the country's web users.

"The industry has great potential to grow in the coming years, though the growth rate will slow down as the market of online payments industry is already big enough," said Jiang Lixin, an analyst with iResearch.

The industry will grow 73.4 percent next year, though its growth is projected to slow to 31 percent in 2013. Total online payments are expected to hit 2 trillion yuan ($292.9 billion) per year in 2012, the report estimated.

A survey of 3,126 netizens by iResearch this May found that 35 netizens, or 1.12 percent of all those surveyed, had their online payment accounts stolen, and about 20 percent knew others whose accounts had been stolen.

"The stealing and fraud risk of third-party payment is still controllable," Jiang said.