China mobile payments maintain rapid growth

BEIJING - Mobile payments are gaining popularity in China as cashless transactions take hold in the country, central bank data showed on Tuesday.

Chinese banks dealt with 8.6 billion payments from mobile services in Q2, up 40.5 percent from a year ago, the People's Bank of China said in a report.

The combined value of mobile payments jumped 33.8 percent to 39.24 trillion yuan ($6 trillion).

Online transactions through non-bank payment platforms came in at 31.49 trillion yuan, rising 34.9 percent from the same period last year.

The rapid growth came as Chinese mobile payment giants have developed user-friendly platforms such as WeChat Pay to encourage cashless transactions. In April, Alibaba's financial affiliate Ant Financial said it planned to spend 6 billion yuan in the next two years to push forward the drive.

According to a report jointly produced by Tencent, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, and French market research firm Ipsos, 84 percent of Chinese said they are "comfortable" going out with only mobile phones, no cash.