China’s Fintech market booms as mobile payments in China rise. In 2015, WeChat Pay announced that it was accepting bitcoin for its concierge services. At the beginning of the year, Starbucks revealed that it would also start accepting WeChat Pay at its China stores.
As a person who come from China, I can see how China dominates the mobile payment market. The credit card use in China is smaller comparing that in the U.S. because China’s credit card security system is not as well-developed as the U.S. Most people complete mobile payments through third party such as Alipay and Wechat Pay – the two companies that operated by Ant Financial and dominated the market. Recent research found that Alipay received the biggest investment in 2016 at $4.5 billion as FinTech funding increased in China. Research from iResearch in China has found that Chinese third-party mobile payments more than tripled in 2016 to $5.5 trillion.
There are good opportunities for Fintech companies targeting at China’s mobile payment markets, providing the best technology and collaborating with the Chinese firms. However, the policy in China tends to protect and benefit local Fintech firms and will be very hard for the U.S. companies to compete with the local firms.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/research-china-fintech-booms-mobile-payments-outpace-us-50x/
Very interesting post! My parents use WeChat, and the “Red Envelope” option is extremely popular within my parents’ circle (here in the US) and with my relatives in China. The “Red Envelope” allows people to send each other money, and on the receivers’ end, their luck determines how much they get. The payment is then transferred to WeChat Pay. I think the “Red Envelope” is an ingenious way to market WeChat Pay and increase people’s interest.