2016年CRI Mobile payment apps take measures to compete for market shares and revenues in China

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One of the most popular apps in China for mobile payments has been WeChat's "Wallet" program.

Users simply transfer money from their bank accounts into the app, which can now be used at most retail¹ outlets² in the major cities in China.

However, Liu Peng, head of WeChat's mobile payment section, says they hope to expand their services beyond just retail.

"We are mulling over ideas to get into different sectors⁴, including agriculture and maybe even the industrial sector³. We're looking at different ideas about creating different applications."

At the same time, WeChat also launched its "No Cash Life" promotion⁵ earlier this month.

It's teamed up with around 700-thousand virtual and brick-and-mortar shops, as well as 40 financial institutions in China, to woo customers with bigger discounts.

"I bought a cup of milk tea via Alipay and got a 0.2 yuan discount on it."

Alipay's Ant Financial has also announced an investment of some 150 million U.S. dollars to help small and medium-sized businesses get involved in mobile payments over the next 3 years.

Song Jie with Ant Financial says they would like to see everyone get involved in mobile payments.

"Our company will open up all our capabilities⁶ to the public on our platforms, including finance, security, risk control and data processing divisions."

And it’s not just the private sector leading the charge in mobile payments.

State-run banking⁷ giant ICBC has also released a new mobile payment service as well.

Wang Dufu with ICBC's Bankcard Service Center says they hope their new QR code payment service can help establish direct links with more small businesses.

"We want to get to know their business operations and capital flow habits through our data processing. It should help us offer more credit support for these kinds of small businesses in the future."

Official estimates put China's mobile payment market at over 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of this year.

That's expected to increase to 2.7-trillion US dollars by 2018.

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.