(Yicai Global) June 16 -- Over the past decade in China, mobile payments have gone from being an emerging trend to one of the most widely accepted and most frequently used ways of paying for purchases, according to a report by the Payment & Clearing Association of China.

The volume and value of mobile payment transactions handled by domestic banks last year was 282.67 times and 228.13 times greater than in 2012, the association’s annual report on China’s payments industry showed today.

Chinese banks processed 151.228 billion mobile payments in 2021, with the amount reaching CNY526.98 trillion (USD78.5 trillion), up 22.7 percent and 21.9 percent from the year before, according to the report.

Payment institutions handled 996.003 billion mobile transactions, up 27 percent, worth CNY359.49 trillion, up 19.4 percent, over 2020, with the average amount per payment reaching CNY360.93 (USD53.74).

With online payments growing rapidly in popularity as security gets better, the user base has become more stable, the report pointed out. The number of online payment users rose to 904 million at the end of 2021, an increase of 49.29 million from the close of 2020, accounting for 87.6 percent of all Chinese netizens.

The Cross-border Interbank Payment System is the main channel for cross-border payments in Chinese yuan, the report said. The CIPS processed 3.3416 million transactions worth CNY79.6 trillion last year, making respective gains of 51.6 percent and 75.8 percent from 2020.

The report added that by the end of last year, there were more than 4,300 licensed institutions handling payment clearing and settlement services in China, mainly banks, finance companies, non-bank payment agencies, and infrastructure operators. Just over 73 percent of them were profitable in 2021.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Peter Thomas