A new report from the Chinese central bank points to a surge in mobile payments in the second quarter of 2019.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released the “2019 Second Quarter Payments System Operations General Situation Report” (2019年第二季度支付体系运行总体情况) on 22 August.
According to the report Chinese banking sector financial systems processed a total of 53.671 billion electronic payments operations worth a total of 597.21 trillion yuan in the second quarter.
This included 18.738 billion online payments operations, for YoY growth of 35.09%, whose total value was 486.80 trillion yuan, for a YoY decline of 0.12%.
The quarter also saw 23.734 billion mobile payments operations with a total value of 79.46 trillion yuan, for YoY gains of 59.03% and 26.37% respectively.
The report further indicates that as of the second quarter a total of 10.662 billion bank accounts had been opened in China, for an on-quarter rise of 1.96%, and a deceleration of 1.27 percentage points compared to the end of the previous quarter.
The volume of active bank cards issued in China was 7.978 billion, for an on-quarter rise of 2.64%. This included 7.267 billion debit cards, for an on-quarter rise of 2.60%, and 711 million combined credit and loan cards, for an on-quarter rise of 3.04%.
Chinese citizens currently hold 5.72 bank cards on average and 0.51 combined credit and loan cards.
