The new “ Asia-Pacific Online Payment Methods 2013 – Second Half 2013“ report by Hamburg-based secondary market research company yStats.com indicates that the online payment continues to grow in acceptance, driven by fast development of E-Commerce in the region. The use of third party operators in online payment is an especially fast growing practice in Asian and Pacific countries.
Online payment is increasingly accepted throughout Asia. In China, authorities issued 250 licenses to third party online payment operators by July 2013, though international player PayPal was still waiting for one. Even in cross-border E-Commerce, the method most preferred by online shoppers was domestic third party online payment.
Over 1 billion registered third-party online payment accounts are expected in China by the end of 2013. The largest company on the market was Alipay, followed by Tenpay. Alipay also dominated the third party mobile payment market. In 2013, close to a third of mobile device users in China used mobile payments.
In Japan and South Korea, the most used payment method in B2C E-Commerce was credit card. The payment method most preferred by online shoppers in India in 2013 was cash. In 2012, number of online banking users in Thailand reached over 5 millions.
The number of mobile banking users in Thailand was growing at double digit rates from 2010 to 2012, getting close to 1 million. In Taiwan, financial regulators were working on legal framework for third party online payments, while banks gained permission to operate them. The mobile payments market in Taiwan is forecasted to grow annually by a double-digit rate between 2013 and 2017.
In Australia, in 2013, the share of credit cards, debit cards and specialized payment providers on online payments number reached almost a third, while the most used online payment method was online banking. Meanwhile, more than a half of individuals in New Zealand paid for E-Commerce purchases online last year.
