China’s mobile payments market exploded 317% to $1.59 trillion in 2013

In 2013, mobile payments were the fastest-growing form of payments in China, thanks to participation from banks and a huge explosion in peer-to-peer mobile payments.

The Chinese mobile payment industry rocketed 317.56 percent year-over-year to 9.64 trillion yuan ($1.59 trillion) in 2013, while the number of orders hiked 212.86 percent year-over-year to 1.67 billion, according to the bank-level data released by Chinese central bank People’s Bank of China.

The e-payments business grew rapidly in 2013, recording 25.78 billion orders and a total volume of 1,075 trillion yuan, up 27.40 percent and 29.46 percent respectively from a year earlier. E-payments include three categories of payment services: online payment, phone payment, and mobile payment.

In addition to mobile payments, the volume of the online payments business climbed 28.89 percent YOY to 1,061 trillion yuan. For phone payments, that figure declined 8.92 percent YOY to 4.74 trillion yuan in the same period.

The PBOC report added that China recorded a churn of 1,608 trillion yuan from 50.16 billion non-cash transactions last year, up 21.92 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively.

The total transaction volume by Chinese independent mobile payments services reached 1,219.74 billion yuan (roughly $200 billion) in 2013, a 707 percent year-over-year increase, according to the latest report by online tracking and data analysis service iResearch. iResearch’s data excludes services by banks and China UnionPay, the bankcard association, and includes peer-to-peer money transfers.

This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2014