Asia-Pacific · GDP rank #2
China
CN · CNY @ 0.1471/USD
The only major economy where third-party mobile wallets displaced cards as the primary consumer rail. Alipay and WeChat Pay together clear the overwhelming majority of retail volume; UnionPay remains the dominant card network behind the scenes. The e-CNY is the most-piloted retail CBDC in the world but remains a fraction of total flow; the January 2026 framework revision moves it from cash-equivalent toward interest-bearing digital deposit money. State policy since 2020 has reined in big-tech finance and pushed the sector toward regulated, state-supervised infrastructure.
Tab 02
Consumer payments
How consumers actually pay: the share of cash, the stock and flow of cards, the scheme split at checkout, which mobile wallets matter, and how broadly POS acceptance reaches.
Every figure is authored against a named publisher — click the ⓘ anywhere to open the source panel with the underlying URL and access date.
Cash share of POS volume
% · 2024
Debit card share
% · 2023
Credit card share
% · 2023
Most 'credit' behaviour is Huabei/Baitiao-style instalment lending via wallets, not plastic.
Mobile wallet share
% · 2024
Payment mix
At the point of sale
The shares below are POS volume (count of transactions), which reads differently from POS value. For the value-share read, see the card-economy grid underneath.
Share of POS
- Cash9%
- Credit card8%
- Debit card26%
- Instant / A2A65%
- Mobile wallet~80%
- BNPL~12%
- Other~3%
Cash behaviour
- ATM network
- 872,000
- Avg. ATM withdrawal
- ¥1,650
- Cash share · value
- 5%
- Cash share · volume
- 9%
Source · PBOC
Scheme share
Which networks clear the card volume
Scheme share is the split of general-purpose card purchase volume — not issuance, not count of cards. A high domestic share (e.g. UnionPay, RuPay, ELO) means a large share of card flow never touches a global scheme.
Dual-brand issuance with UnionPay is now rare; pure foreign-scheme issuance remains minimal.
Share of card volume
- Visa<1%
- Mastercard<1%
- Amex<1%
- Other<0.1%
- Domestic Scheme~98%
Debit card transactions
transactions/year · 2023
Debit card spend
CNY annual · 2023
Includes cash-withdrawal and corporate flows; pure POS consumer far smaller.
Credit card transactions
transactions/year · 2023
Credit card spend
CNY annual · 2023
Average debit ticket size
CNY · 2023
Average credit ticket size
CNY · 2023
Mobile wallets
Where wallets actually land
User counts are the best single scalar for wallet reach, but they understate usage intensity in markets where one super-app carries multi-digit trillions of renminbi or rupees. For flow, see the rails tab.
Active users
- Alipay900M
2024
- WeChat Pay1.2B+
2024
- UnionPay QuickPass (云闪付)~560M
2024
- e-CNY260M+
June 2024
Notable wallets
Alipay
Consumer-facing wallet + super-app. Post-restructuring (2023), Alipay is regulated as a non-bank payment institution under PBOC.
Ant Group Annual Statistics
WeChat Pay
Embedded in WeChat super-app; accessible to WeChat's ~1.38bn MAU.
Tencent Annual Report 2024
UnionPay QuickPass (云闪付)
Bank-consortium alternative launched 2017; far smaller share than Alipay/WeChat.
UnionPay
e-CNY
State-issued retail CBDC; 26+ city pilots, salary and government-benefit use-cases.
PBOC
Full reference