Mobile payments surge, says UnionPay

THE mobile payment market grew significantly last year, with users making an average three payments a day, China UnionPay said yesterday.

Mobile payments have become increasingly important to many people across the country and has won the favor of county and township residents as well as small and micro business owners, the report said.

Self-employed entrepreneurs, private business owners and online shop owners use it more frequently than others.

Around a third of them used it more than five times a day last year.

The report said that subway lines and more than 1,600 public buses in 32 cities across the country accepted UnionPay mobile payment.

Also, more than 10,000 parking lots in more than 200 cities have adopted UnionPay’s digital payment system.

In the past year, financial technologies enabled users to enjoy more convenience and security while making payments on their mobile phones.

New identity authentication technologies such as biometric identification further facilitated the market, together with traditional password authentication methods, China UnionPay said.

With the popularization of financial knowledge and efforts to crack down on telecom network fraud, the general public’s awareness of risk prevention has improved.

The study said 51 percent of consumers experienced online fraud last year. But that was a decrease of 16 percent from 2018.

And the proportion of people who hit by financial losses declined by around a third year on year.

The report was based on a survey conducted by China UnionPay, 17 national commercial banks and 18 payment agencies. About 62,000 valid questionnaires were screened, with about 70 percent of respondents being between the ages of 25 and 45.