(Yicai Global) March 19 -- China's beauty salons and tea houses have logged explosive growth in online mobile payments as people finally get to enjoy time outdoors as epidemic control restrictions are relaxed and businesses reopen.

Hair, beauty and nail salons had a more than four-fold increase in mobile payments through WeChat in the week ended March 10 from the same period a month earlier, according to data released by China's most popular social networking app today.

Tea houses enjoyed an almost nine-fold rise in takings on WeChat Pay, as people rushed to catch up with friends after many months of self-confinement. Three times the number of snacks were bought and, overall, the catering sector saw income on WeChat more than double.

Supermarkets and convenience stores have also begun to recover. The number of WeChat payments in supermarkets jumped 68 percent over the week and convenience stores saw a gain of 37 percent.

Supermarkets in Shenzhen were the quickest to get back on their feet, followed by Guangzhou and Chengdu. Shanghai came seventh, followed by Beijing, according to rankings provided by WeChat. Convenience stores in Dongguan in Guangdong province, Changsha in Hunan province and Shenzhen had the top three sales amounts nationwide. Guangzhou was fifth, Shanghai seventh and Beijing eighth.

More people are now travelling by public transport. The number of WeChat payments for bus and subway tickets doubled in the first week of March. The three cities with the fastest growth in payments were Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Xi'an in central Shaanxi province, according to WeChat data.

Newly released WeChat mini-programs, which are sub-apps in the WeChat ecosystem such as e-commerce and games that do not require the downloading of a separate app, almost tripled that week.

Both the number of daily active users of online education mini-programs and the number of students taking live classes on WeChat more than doubled.

Editor: Kim Taylor