--FILE--un cliente usa il suo smartphone per eseguire la scansione di un codice QR di pagare tramite Alipay in uno stand nella città di Nanjing East cinese della provincia di Jiangsu, 28 agosto 2015.
--FILE--A customer uses her smartphone to scan a QR code to pay by Alipay at a booth in Nanjing city, east China's Jiangsu province, 28 August 2015. The mobile payments sector in China has seen huge developments and widespread adoption among consumers. Take what happened during Chinese New Year 2014. WeChat, China's most popular messaging app and social network, launched a campaign designed to promote its new payment platform. The then almost-400 million WeChat users were able to send 40 million digital hongbao (traditional red envelopes containing cash gifts) to friends and family through the app in 10 days. This year, 1 billion hongbao transactions took place on Chinese New Year's Eve alone. A fierce battle for mobile payment in China has begun. WeChat's target is China's entrenched digital payment platform, Alipay. Alipay launched in 2004 on desktop and sat neatly within Alibaba's enormous digital ecosystem that includes the ecommerce titans Taobao and Tmall. Alipay's digital wallet currently boasts over 350 million users, and makes up around 80% of China's mobile payment market. Although Alipay is still the dominant player in the market, WeChat payment continues to wrestle more market share off the incumbent, given the wide use of WeChat as a social media platform in China.
