Alibaba’s payment affiliate Alipay.com Co. website is displayed on a Samsung tablet in Beijing. The Alipay said yesterday it completed $148bn transactions.

 

Reuters/Beijing

 

 

The payment affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, China’s biggest e-commerce company, said yesterday it completed more mobile payment transactions in 2013 than US-based PayPal and Square Inc combined.

Last year, more than 100mn users completed over 2.78bn mobile transactions with a total value topping 900bn yuan ($148.43bn), according to a posting on Alipay’s Weibo microblogging account.

In China, mobile transactions are becoming increasingly popular as more consumers use devices to buy everything from movie tickets to clothing.

Mobile payments also are driving the growth of e-commerce in Europe and the US At PayPal, a division of Ebay Inc, mobile payment volume nearly doubled to $27bn in 2013, the company said last month.

Alipay said that at the end of last year, it had nearly 300mn real-name users, or nearly one-half of China’s 618mn Internet users. Alipay users completed 12.5bn transactions in 2013, the company said.  Alibaba, which controls nearly 80%of China’s internet shopping market, is expected to sell shares this year in what could be the biggest IPO since Facebook Inc’s 2012 float.