China has a relatively low credit card penetration rate, and consumers have been skipping the adoption of payment cards in favor of mobile options like WeChat Pay, which is built into the near-ubiquitous mobile messaging service WeChat, and Alipay, which is offered by the popular ecommerce platform Alibaba.
"These payment services in particular helped encourage adoption by running cash prize promotions and other discounts tied to the Lunar New Year holiday. Mobile payment use has also been hastened by the widespread adoption of QR codes in China, which lower the cost barrier for merchants and make processing transactions dead simple for shoppers," said eMarketer senior analyst Rahul Chadha.
When it comes to payment app adoption, China is on a whole different level compared with the rest of the world.
"Payment culture in China has evolved in a unique manner compared with developed countries in the West," said Showmik Podder, junior forecasting analyst at eMarketer.