Nielsen, AliPay: Chinese travellers now spend more via mobile than cash

Nielsen and AliPay have released a joint report stating that Chinese consumers now spend more abroad in mobile payments than by cash.

The report states that currently, 32% of payments made by Chinese travellers are done digitally.

The report, entitled ‘2018 trends of Chinese mobile payment in outbound tourism’, surveyed more than 2,800 Chinese travellers and around 1,200 overseas merchants.

It has also been noted over the past few years that tourism from China is on the up, thanks to changes in travel restrictions and a growing middle class – in fact, around 140mn trips were made from China in 2018, up 13.5 percentage points from 2017.  

In AliPay and Nielsen’s report, it was found that Chinese tourists travelled to more locations and made an increased number of mobile payments in countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore – as well as further afield, in Europe, the US and Australia.

The proportion of tourists using mobile payments grew from 65% to 69% this year, with 55% of those born between 1960 and 1979 using the modern payment method which shows that the figures are not exclusively led by the younger generation.