BEIJING, China—With mobile payments in China booming, cash is going away—and the trend has brought with it new attention from the Central Bank.
The booming digital payments market in China is also happening despite efforts on the part of the Central Bank to stop Ant Financial and Tencent from being the dominant players in the digital retail payment market, the Financial Times reported.
Citing figures from research firm iResearch, The Financial Times reported mobile payments in China hit $17 trillion in 2017, with Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate and Tencent’s WeChat Pay emerging as the leaders in the country. The analysis noted that last year the People’s Bank of China found 602 instances in which merchants refused to accept cash.
Of the cases, the report noted that 558 have been resolved via policy communications and so-called “criticism-based education.”