Alipay Talks May Day and Mobile Payments in China
May Day, for those not familiar, is one of China’s biggest holidays. Also known as the Labor Day celebrations, only one day is actually given off, but generally other days are included but have to be made up later to provide an extra-long weekend. Anyway, with another May Day concluded, and a lot of traveling and shopping done in the meantime, Ant Financial dropped us some word about the specifics of May Day and mobile payments this year.
Very big points immediately leapt out at even casual observers. For instance, Alipay actually processed five times more in-store transactions this year than last year. The destinations, meanwhile, were unchanged until one gets to the top seventh space. Hong Kong was first this year and last, and Thailand was second in both years.
South Korea, Japan, Macau and Taiwan rounded out the top six for both years, but in 2018, Australia took the place of the United States as the seventh. The US dropped to 10th place in 2018. Only one country left the list altogether: Germany. Germany was largely replaced by Malaysia, who only recently started accepting Alipay.Growth, meanwhile, was staggering. Transactions from Canada, for example, increased 16-fold, the reports noted, while the Netherlands boosted its figures 12-fold. Average spending was up mostly across the board, up 59 percent on average to 1,508 RMB (about $237 US).
Basically, there was plenty of spending going on, and a lot of it done abroad. Though it’s not exactly big spending—Alipay has long been known as the “big bucks” brand in China—there’s still quite a bit of it. What’s notable here is how much of it is going on outside of China; it’s enough to make you wonder if Alipay’s considering getting out of China altogether thanks to the sheer amount of regulations that the company has to follow. It would cost it a ton of business, but if the government’s demands start making even that unprofitable, there’s a possible reason afoot.
That’s strictly speculative, though; what’s much clearer is that people are turning to Alipay in steadily growing numbers. Can the company keep up this momentum? Or has it reached peak growth? Only time will tell on that front, and it’s doing land-office business in the meantime.