Alibaba’s third party payment subsidiary Alipay almost hit a milestone in 2013 by nearly reaching 300 million users.

The announcement made by Alipay stated while they almost reached 300 million, they also processed over 12.5 billion transactions throughout 2013. The announcement emphasized the amount of mobile users using the service, with over 100 million users paying for goods and services with the Alipay mobile wallet. Mobile users alone were responsible for over 900 billion Yuan ($148.42 billion) and 2.78 billion transactions.

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During the Chinese Lunar New Year over 100 million transactions were placed via the Alipay mobile wallet, 52% of all Alipay transactions. These numbers prove the importance of mobile payments throughout China.

2013 saw Alipay stand up to some swift competition with the arrival of WeChat’s payment feature.  Since WeChat’s parent company Tencent introduced the payment feature, WeChat has been on Alipay’s heels by offering an almost identical set of payment features such as taxi-booking, train ticket reservations, film ticket reservations, mutual funds, and phone bill charges.

According to reports by Chinese data firm iResearch, third party payment solutions were responsible for over 1.22 trillion Yuan in transactions throughout 2013. A 707% year over year increase. The data also states 2014 will see another 141.1% year over year increase in usage.

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