Outbound Chinese tourists continue to embrace mobile payments, survey finds

Nielsen released 2018 trends of Chinese mobile payment in outbound tourism in cooperation with Alipay, which surveyed more than 2,800 Chinese travellers and over 1,200 overseas merchants.

The report found that on their most recent overseas trips, Chinese tourists paid for 32% of transactions using mobile payment, overtaking cash for the first time. In addition, 58% of surveyed merchants said that after adopting Alipay, their foot traffic increased, while 56% claimed improved sales.

Other key findings include:

• outbound Chinese tourists travelled to more destinations in 2018;

• shopping, accommodations, and dining remained the top three categories for purchases by Chinese tourists;

• Chinese tourists from second-tier cities have become a new driving force in the Chinese outbound tourism market (38% of surveyed tourists from second-tier cities travelled to Europe in 2018, surpassing the proportion of respondents from first-tier cities for the first time);

• Chinese millennials are no longer the single most dominant group of mobile payment users abroad - the older generations are catching up (68% of Chinese tourists born between 1970 and 1979 used mobile payment methods while travelling abroad in 2018).