Alipay’s Mobile Payments Summer Spending Proves Hefty

Having recently come off a holiday weekend ourselves, we know how great it can be to get a little time to relax from our normal round of labors. The Chinese, meanwhile, take this to an almost staggering extent with a two-month summer holiday. While plenty of Chinese stay home for the holiday, the growing Chinese tourist class, meanwhile, often takes advantage of the chance to travel. That means mobile payments-boy, does it ever-and that means Alipay dropped word our way about the stats on spending over the summer holiday.

Perhaps the centerpiece of the report was that Chinese travelers dropped 2.6 times what they did last summer in in-store overseas transactions. Other Asian countries were major destinations, as Hong Kong proved to be the king of shopping overseas. It took over the top slot from Thailand, which dropped to second place this year. South Korea, Japan and Macau remained third, fourth and fifth from last year, however. The United States, meanwhile, slipped to tenth place just under Malaysia, as the duo switched places from last year.

Russia may not have cracked the top 10, but it was a draw nonetheless; the World Cup host saw Alipay transactions up over 5,000 percent of their previous year as a result. It wasn’t the only big gainer, either; Luxembourg was up 39 times what it was last year, and Switzerland was up 18-fold.

No matter how you slice it, it was another big year for Alipay, and likely another reason why the Chinese government seems freaked out by the economic juggernaut living in its midst. It’s impressive to see these numbers gain-regardless of the political issues involved-and it demonstrates clearly that the Chinese love mobile payments and will likely continue to put them to work for some time. It’s easy to see why; mobile payments are harder to lose even while traveling, as long as you keep your phone handy, and make you much less a target for thieves.

In the end, the increased use of mobile payments will prompt a range of social issues; a big new slug of money is parked with one asset class, but it’s one that has the government at least somewhat unnerved. That’s a recipe for change that may reach fruition before long.