Alipay Drops Further Word on Golden Week Mobile Payments Results

October 11, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

Anyone who read that Alipay bit yesterday about the huge new gains the company saw is likely pretty well impressed with them, and with good reason. Huge new gains in transactions cropped up in Japan, in the UK, and beyond. Alipay dropped some word our way about its Golden Week results in general, and the word continued to prove nothing but golden for Alipay.

One of the biggest new items was that Alipay launched a “lucky draw” campaign, which featured prizes from over 200 Alipay merchants. With over 3.1 million total participants and better than 230 million views on social media, it’s a safe bet that Alipay considers it every bit the success the winner of said prizes did.

It wasn’t just about the prizes, either. Alipay also offered some statistics on this year’s travel worldwide. The top two destinations in the 2018 Golden Week holiday (in terms of transaction volume) matched those of 2017, Hong Kong and Thailand in first and second respectively. Japan, however, took over as the new number three, taking the slot formerly held by Taiwan. Taiwan this year actually fell to sixth.

Bringing up the rear and proving that not even a nascent trade war can prevent travel, the United States came in at 10th place. Interestingly, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia held their places as well at seventh, eighth, and ninth respectively.

Average total spend had likewise increased, up an average 30 percent for each user. Recent additions to Alipay’s lineup included Iceland and the Maldives, as well as some lesser-known European stops.

While there aren’t any spectacular gains like those we saw yesterday, that’s less of a problem than some might suspect. Alipay seems to be making hefty gains in comparatively new places—we’d actually suspected hefty percentage gains over trivial bases—and making smaller advances in places where its market is established. Between the numbers and the incredible response to the lucky draw competition, Alipay has likely further secured its position in the market thanks to a little dose of intermittent conditioning.

All of this is an excellent sign of a major firm in a maturing market, proving that Alipay, along with the mobile payments market, aren’t going anywhere.