Alipay witnesses increase in online payment

BEIJING - More users of Alibaba's third party online payment service platform Alipay used it for mobile payment in 2017 than the previous year, the company said Tuesday.

About 82 percent of the 520 million Alipay users paid for goods and services via the platform in 2017, compared with 71 percent of 450 million Alipay users in 2016, according to the mobile payment giant's annual report.

More than 40 million brick-and-mortar stores nationwide have enabled mobile payment in the past year.

In addition to shopping, mobile payment has expanded further into public services as over 200 million users paid for social security, transport and other public services on mobile at least once last year.

The frequent use of mobile payments enabled about 41.5 million users to enjoy services, such as bike-sharing, without having to pay for deposits, and was worth more than 40 billion yuan ($6.15 billion) last year thanks to good Alipay credit records.

The report showed that China is moving towards a cashless society, as the search requests for purses on Alibaba's e-commerce platforms dropped in 2017, for the first time in history.