Chinese mobile users ages between 20 and 39 are now leading the race in China's rapidly growing domestic proximity mobile payment market - accounting for the majority of all mobile payment users in the country.

According to research conducted by Ipsos, Chinese mobile users in their 20s who live in tier 1 and tier 2 cities account for over two-fifths of the total number of mobile payment users in China.

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Most of them, according to the research, are using mobile payment technologies to make online transactions, pay bills and carry out "online-to-offline commerce", among other things. eMarketer reported that about 43 percent of the total number of mobile payment users who carry out these activities are in between the ages of 20 to 30, while about 35 percent of them are in their 30s. The rest include users ages between 16 and 20 at 7 percent, and users over the age of 40 at 14 percent.

Furthermore, the research also reveals that around 60 percent of Chinese mobile payment users are using Alibaba's payment platform Alipay, while 17 percent of them are using Tencent's mobile payment service, WeChat Pay.

In the Chinese mobile payment market, Alibaba and Tencent are going head to head, while foreign competitors - such as Apple and Samsung - have recently joined in and are trying to catch up within the domestic market. It is said that the total number of mobile payment users in the country had doubled in 2015 and that size is expected to reach about 195.3 million users this year as compared to the mere 37.5 million users in the United States.

There are now around 700 million mobile Internet users in China. In 2016, the number of Chinese mobile payment users is expected to reach around a quarter of the total mobile Internet user base - which is a 45.8 percent increase over last year. Additionally, it is anticipated that almost half of the total smartphone users in China will start making payments with their devices sometime by the year 2020.

TagsMobile Payment Market China, Proximity Mobile Payment Service, Alibaba, Alipay, Tencent, WeChat Pay