New data from China’s peak body for the banking sector points to a sizeable rise in mobile and online banking transactions in 2018.
In 2018 China saw a total of 94.37 billion mobile phone banking transactions, according to figures from the “2018 China Banking Sector Social Responsibility Report” （2018年中国银行业社会责任报告） released by the China Banking Association (CBA) on 17 July.
The total value of these transactions was 241.68 trillion yuan for a YoY increase of 11.86%.
2018 also saw a total of 152.47 billion internet banking transactions, for a YoY rise of 30.13% and a transaction value of 1639.4 trillion yuan.
E-commerce platform transactions totalled 548 million in 2018, for a transaction value of 2.01 trillion yuan.
In contrast, of the end of 2018 the Chinese banking sector had 228,600 business premises, as well as 1.03 million automatic banking devices that processed roughly 40 billion transactions worth around 66 trillion yuan.
According to the report the expansion of online service channels and a shift in consumption and social interactions in China towards the online sphere has led to the continuous rise of internet banking, as well as growth in mobile banking and e-commerce.
“In 2018, banking sector financial institutions actively adapted to changes in demand from financial consumers,” said Pan Guangwei (潘光伟), party secretary of CBA, at a press conference.
“[They] endeavoured to broadly and deeply apply fintech, continuously drove smart, customised model-transition growth, and accelerated the upgrade and replacement of online service platforms for mobile banking, online banking and customer service centres.”
