Digital Money in China 2013
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China, the most populous country in the world with over 1.35 billion presents good examples of Digital Money. While many believe PayPal to have the largest number of users, Alipay launched in 2009, has overtaken PayPal online with over 550 million registered users. Tencent, the leader in messaging, is also making strong plays to capture this market, and M&A activity is expected around the availability of licenses. E-commerce is a strong driver especially for numerous small businesses who leverage this capability. With the advent of smartphone and mobile internet, there have been high profile launches of mobile wallets, such as the Alipay Wallet that extends payment services from online to mobile and offline. The latest mobile payment app, Wallet is from China UnionPay (CUP) and aims to connect 3500 million credit cards to mobile phones. The opportunity is not without risk, with China reportedly accounting for $420.4 billion illicit flows in 2010, the highest of all countries.
The China report is a viewport from Shift Thought that describes the opportunity through their unique Digital Money approach that covers 32 services including mobile payments, online payments, mobile money, branchless banking, remittances and more. “Viewport” is a term Shift Thought has coined to describe their unique format which is a portable report that can be navigated like a portal. The viewport offers a 360 degree perspective of market segments, services, players, partnerships and regulatory environment. It provides links to all the key initiatives and players in the ecosystem, and addresses the needs of payments experts from multiple industries including banks, mobile operators, payment providers and others.
Shift Thought offers consulting and research services using their unique SAGE technology to monitor the complex Digital Money ecosystem across 200+ markets world-wide.
FAST FACTS
1: THE CONTEXT
Digital Money around the world
Digital Money in APAC
2: DIGITAL MONEY IN CHINA
The Digital Money Dashboard
Comparative analysis by Purpose
Digital Money Drivers
Timeline of Digital Money
Economic Outlook
Business Models
Digital Money Adoption
3: MARKET SEGMENTS
Key Segment Analysis
Payments Infrastructure and Access
4: THE SERVICES EXPLORED
Where is the money?
5: REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT
Overview of regulations
List of Regulations
Rules
6: ECOSYSTEM ANALYSIS
Evolving models
Players in the Ecosystem
7: DIGITAL MONEY INITIATIVES
Summary of Initiatives
Initiative Profiles
8: PLAYER PROFILES
Summary of Players
Player Profiles
Appendix
What is Digital Money?
Methodology
Glossary
Figure 1: Extract from AFI 2012 Progress Report on Maya Declarations
Figure 2: Mobile money deployments by World Bank region, March 2012
Figure 3: The Digital Money Dashboard
Figure 4: Channel Access In the World, Region and Country
Figure 5: Analysis by Main Service
Figure 6: Timeline of Digital Money in China
Figure 7: Business models for Digital Money
Figure 8: Shift Thought Evolutionary Framework for Digital Money
Figure 9: Penetration levels for outreach
Figure 10: Social network users by top sites
Figure 11: A summary of financial access channels
Figure 12: Change in channel access since 2005
Figure 13: Growth in Internet users 2005-2013 (in m)
Figure 14: Steep growth in mobile users in the country
Figure 15: Popularity of alternate channels in China
Figure 16: Trend in remittances in China 2001-2015 in EAP context
Figure 17: Distribution of Migrant Stock
Figure 18: Top Remittance Corridors
Figure 19: Global and Local Models for Digital Money
Figure 20: Estimated market share for banks in China
Figure 21: Composition of the financial system in China
Figure 22: Composition of the Chinese banking industry
Figure 23: Tranches of payment licenses issued in China
Figure 24: Market shares of mobile operators in China
Figure 25: Payments activity by mobile operators in China
Figure 26: Taking the long way around
Figure 27: The Three Waves of Innovation
Figure 28: Extract from AFI 2012 Progress Report on Maya Declarations
Figure 36: The Digital Money Ecosystem
Figure 30: The Digital Money SAGE
LIST OF INITIATIVES
99BILL FAST MONEY ACCOUNTS
99BILL MOBILE PAYMENTS
...
...
WeiboPay
Western Union
LIST OF PLAYERS
Agricultural Bank of China
Alipay
...
...
...
Western Union - Global
China is currently undergoing a transformation in financial services, with the spread of Digital Money aided by the rapid penetration of mobile phones.Along with other countries in the APAC region, it is engaged in creating an enabling environment to promote financial inclusion as well as improve payment systems for broader use.
At ShiftThought we work with organisations around the world to shift the thinking from a focus on Mobile Money to planning for the wider set of initiatives we term as Digital Money. Through this Country Series of viewports we share with you findings from our on-going in-depth analysis of the state of play of Digital Money Initiatives in each country, within the context of the larger region and world-wide trends.
Digital Money services are no longer confined to a single industry, and this breaks down traditional models of competitive analysis. Our approach is designed to helps players to understand the strategies and business models coming from industries other than their own, across a range of products and services and from different parts of the world, to distil best practices for building successful brands that provide innovative access to financial services.
This viewport shares the analytic frameworks we developed to communicate the complexities of the transformation underway in the country, within the broader context of the developments in Digital Money across the world.