When diners ask for the bill in an urban Chinese restaurant, they are more likely to reach for their mobile phones than their wallets. This reflects the rapid spread of mobile payment platforms, which are pushing urban China towards becoming a cashless society.
In a survey of 1,000 urban consumers conducted by the Financial Times, 98% of respondents (受访者) said they had used mobile payment platforms over the past three months. For example, Alibaba's Alipay was the most frequently used payment platform preferred by 79% of respondents. That is a far greater proportion than those who said they used credit cards (45%) or cash (65%).
These respondents said they most often used them for payments in supermarkets and shopping malls, but they are also popular for ordering food, buying travel tickets or eating out.
Unsurprisingly, the younger the respondents, the more likely they were to have adopted this relatively young technology. While only 56% of respondents aged 35 or older said they preferred making mobile payments to paying via PC, even though almost all owned smart phones, 88% of 18 to 24-year-olds preferred paying via their mobile device.
Mobile platforms are now taking advantage of the big data resources of their parent companies to expand business, and to challenge the traditional banks. It is not surprising that China's big banks are refusing to co-operate with the upstarts, limiting the range of services they are able to offer. On the other hand, China's banks, especially the big four state lenders, are known to fiercely guard their turf(领域). Both regulators and China's well-entrenched(根基深厚) banks will need to adapt if these online lenders are to succeed.
