Mobile Banking Clients of China’s Big Five State-owned Banks Exceed 1 Billion

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Finance consumers in China are making increasing use of the mobile banking services provided by the country’s leading state-owned lenders.

The 2018 annual reports of China’s big five state-owned banks indicates that they collectively have over 1 billion users of their mobile banking apps.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China had the largest number of mobile banking clients as of the end of 2018, with a user base of 313 million for YoY growth of 11%.

China Construction Bank’s mobile app had the second largest number of users at approximately 310 million following YoY growth of 16.2%, while Agricultural Bank of China took third place with 257 million users last year, for a YoY rise of 24.8%.

Bank of China’s mobile user base increased from 115 million to 140 million in 2018 while their total transaction sum was over 20 trillion yuan, while Bank of Communications had 74.14 million registered users of its mobile banking app for YoY growth of 21.42%.

BoC’s saw a total of 370 million mobile banking transactions for YoY growth of 21.71%, while the transaction sum was 11 trillion yuan for YoY growth of 43.79%.

The “China Mobile Banking Market Quarterly Monitoring Report Q4 2018” (中国手机银行市场季度监测报告2018年第4季度) released by Analysys indicates that in the final quarter of 2018 China’s mobile banking user transactions were worth a total of 77.1 trillion yuan, for an on-quarter rise of 8.8%.

The report further indicates that China Construction Bank, ICBC and Agricultural Bank of China lay claim to the biggest shares of the Chinese mobile banking market, at 21.4%, 19.1% and 17.2% respectively.

Amongst joint-stock commercial banks the leading mobile bankers are China Merchants Bank, Ping An Bank, China Everbright and China CITIC, with users bases of 78.2704 million, 62.25 million, 49.3733 million and 36.6997 million respectively, with all lenders seeing YoY growth of over 30%.

The “2018 Q4 Payments System Operations General Situation Report” (2018年四季度支付体系运行总体情况) released by the Chinese central bank indicates that in the final quarter of last year banking sector financial institutions processed a total of 17.708 billion mobile payments operations with a total value of 78.22 trillion yuan, for YoY growth of 78.79% and 45.47% respectively.