Alipay Wallet has 190M annual active users, processing over 50% of Alipay's daily transactions

Alipay Wallet, the mobile app operated by Alibaba’s finance arm, announced today it has had 190 million annual active users.

The number of daily transactions through mobile has reached 45 million, over 50% of the total through Alipay (The Alipay online payment solution doesn’t only support Alibaba’s own marketplaces such as Taobao and Tmall, but also third-party businesses).

A little less than one year ago, Alipay Wallet had 100 million users and was processing one third of Alipay’s transactions. As of the end of 2013, Alipay had a total of 300 million users.

The mobile version of the Alipay online payment service was rebranded Alipay Wallet, a mobile app not only for mobile payments but also for users’ daily lives, at the end of 2012. From then on the app began to add functions and features such as e-loyalty programs, e-ticketing, scanning-to-compare prices, credit card management, bookkeeping, and real-time information on stocks, among others.

It also has been expanding the payment service from online physical or virtual goods sales to the offline world and service sector. Alipay Wallet now supports payments for taxi fares and public transportation; it’s available at vending machines, convenience stores, department stores, pharmacies, hospitals, parking lots, etc.

When it comes to technologies, Alipay Wallet supports payments through QR Code, acoustic, and fingerprint. And the company is working on other methods.

Alipay Wallet has become a competitor to Tencent’s WeChat in terms of mobile commerce and mobile content. One year ago Alipay Wallet added a layer for third-party businesses, which is similar to WeChat’s public account platform. Services like DDMap, an e-coupon service Alibaba has a stake in, and iReader, a mobile reading service, have been available on Alipay Wallet.

More than 60 APIs were released one month ago that enable third-party developers to create more applications on top of Alipay Wallet. Xinxiwang Shuangfeng, a provider of dairy products, has integrated into Alipay Wallet and is now selling bottled milk on it.

Alipay Wallet began expanding to markets outside mainland China earlier this year.

This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2014